


Drabble Series, 2011 - Present

by TeddyRadiator



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:49:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 136
Words: 52,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24236059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeddyRadiator/pseuds/TeddyRadiator
Summary: This is just a series of drabbles I've written over the years for LiveJournal's various drabble groups. For those who are wondering, a Drabble is a story written (usually) in 100 words exactly. You can write more, but the paragraph/idea/moment must be 100 words. Most of these are from the GrangerSnape100 Challenge, but I've thrown a few others in as well. Drabbles are an excellent writing exercise, and I encourage any writer to give them a try. It's never easy telling a story in 100-word bites, but it's my belief I wrote some of my best work in drabbles.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Severus Snape
Comments: 57
Kudos: 36





	1. When Desire Is All That Is Left

I remember desire.

It was a burning thirst, a voracious hunger in the belly of my youth, spreading in so many different directions it could never be satisfied. Power, women, magic, vanity; proffered to me in the Dark Lord’s tempting banquet of seduction, and I feasted until I was bloated, sickened with it.

Now, as I walk through these halls, and feel the hatred of every pair of eyes that settle on my restless form, it’s hard to conjure up even the faintest trace of the petty ambitions that brought me to this pass.

_What do you desire now, Severus?_

~o0o~

Somewhere, behind layers of protective love and bloody-minded determination, Potter is hiding. From me. He and Voldemort are the bookends of my life, and between them, a brilliant little witch, daring and clever, stands, ready to defend her friend to the death.

I once promised to die for the Dark Lord, and I probably will. But have I ever truly had the will, the courage, to die for what I love?

No.

But Hermione does.

Oh, to be protected and loved by such a brave heart. Perhaps, in the end, this is the only worthy desire I will ever have.


	2. A Spell Moste Potente

The Wizarding world gave you insight, a truer sense of the real and unreal, the seen and unseen. Hermione had always been a practical witch; she knew it was another old wives’ tale, created to frighten children.

This was just whimsy, a _dare_.

“Madness, more like,” she grumbled, trudging through the fallen leaves. “What do you possibly hope to accomplish, playing this silly game?”

_Guarde thy Hearte, oh Woman wise!  
Heedeth the Man, whose blackest Eyes  
Hold thee in his Gaze of Luste,  
Lest he breaketh thy Spirit’s Truste.  
Walketh thou thrice round his Grave on Hallow’s Eve,  
And if fell fingers pluck thy Sleeve,  
His command thou willst obey,  
Till Death takes thee on Judgement Day._

On her third circle around Severus Snape’s tomb, the hand closed over her arm. Hermione spun around, her cry of surprise dying to a whisper.

Haloed by the bloated, harvest moon, he could have been a demon, or an angel, or some sweet hybrid of both. Hermione stood entranced, lost in his liquid, languid black eyes.

He pulled her close, and whispered, “Come with me.” His soft voice was irresistible.

The longing within her recognised its mate, and she took his hand without fear.


	3. Witchfinger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Halloween, 2016

The village was as crowded as market day, but without the usual cheery bustle. The full streets were eerily silent, the faces of the growing congregation grim, expectant. They were not there for commerce.

Standing with her parents, Hermione Granger felt a sudden chill race up her spine, making her shudder, and her flesh shiver with goosebumps.

_A witch’s finger just slid up your back,_ her mother would say, then spit through her fingers to ward off the evil eye. The very thought made Hermione feel ill, and not for the first time she wished they had not come today.

* * *

From the edge of town came a slow, steady drumbeat. As one, the crowd turned toward the sound. In the far distance, a figure approached. All around, men flanked him, like mourners following him to his own funeral.

The congregation parted as he neared the square, allowing him to pass. “Don’t look in his eyes, boy,” a man hissed to his young son. “That’s Severus Snape, the Witch.”

The one called Severus Snape turned toward the father. He slowed his pace, then smiled at the child. It was a terrible, ungodly thing.

The witchfinger slid down Hermione’s back once more.

* * *

Magistrate Rowan stalked up onto the stockade, his chest puffed out importantly. Taking a scroll from his sleeve, he read in a prim, high-pitched voice, “Severus Snape, you are brought to this place on charges of witchcraft! On the thirty-first day of October in the year of our Lord, Sixteen Hundred Ninety Two, our esteemed Reverend Cotton Mather did go forth from the church, and saw you cavorting with spirits in the most lascivious manner!”

Hermione watched the accused man closely; something about him fascinated her. Perhaps because she had never known anyone who cavorted with spirits, lasciviously or otherwise.

* * *

From the stockade, Snape turned toward her, and caught her in the fiery gaze of his black eyes. His thin lips curved into a smile. Not the demonic sneer he saved for the puritan whispers, but something vastly different. Hermione felt her world tilt, her vision dim. From deep within, she heard, “Ah, another one. A witch knows his own. Have a care, Hermione Granger, lest you find yourself in my place.”

The voice was low and smooth; cool like an autumn breeze. This, she realised, was a true witchfinger, one that did not point in accusation, but in recognition.

* * *

Later, she would remember the fire licking at his feet, his snarl of defiance; the sudden chill that scraped down every spine of every man, woman and child who came that day to witness the witch burning.

She would remember the blinding flash of light, the cry of fear and surprise on every tongue as the witch Severus Snape transformed into a dark wraith of flight. But most of all, she remembered the warmth of his embrace, as he took her away from her certain fate, to a place where no accusing finger ever would dare to point her way.


	4. The Maltese Hyppogryff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The "Flip Your Style" Challenge. 2016

**Part One**

The dim hall smelled of cigar smoke and failure. The stairs were lit by a naked light bulb, throwing strange shapes on the grimy walls. My stilettoes clicked on each step, and I could almost see the cockroaches scuttling away at my approach.

All of them, except for the big one in the office at the top of the stairs.

I paused at the door; _Severus Snape: Private Investigator_ was printed on the glass, in fading silver letters. I may be a socialite, but I’d tasted the fleshpots often enough to know I was in the belly of the beast.

* * *

A fan rotated lazily overhead, casting long shadows. I could see nothing beyond the banker’s light on the paper-strewn desk. Taking a cigarette from my purse, I announced into the darkness, “I’m looking for a private dick named Snape. I may have a case for him.”

“Sure you do, sweetheart,” a deep voice drawled from the darkness. “I was just thinking things were getting a little too dull around here.” A figure rose, and I saw him for the first time. Tall, dark, hard-boiled. He was ugly, in that ugly way that made my knickers wet.

“So talk, Miss Granger.”

* * *

A lighter flared, and I used it to light my cigarette. Blowing a plume of smoke into the room, I demanded, “How do you know me?”

His eyes raked over me like the devil’s pitchforks. “Private dick, remember?” he replied, with a smile like a crocodile. I repressed a shudder that was two parts revulsion and eight parts desire.

Yeah, he was bad. My kind of bad.

I tried not to react, but his sneer told me I was as transparent as water to a man like him. The kind of man that was kryptonite to a girl like me.

* * *

“So you know me. I presume you also know I’ve got the money to back my play.” I made myself sound bored, uncaring. “If you’d like to sleep on a clean bed and eat a hot meal tonight, I think we can do business together.”

I eased myself up on the desk’s corner, crossing my legs. He looked like a leg man.

Snape walked around his desk like a predator, giving me a smile that singed my stockings and made my garters sizzle. “I ought to say no,” he drawled. “A dame like you is nothing but trouble, Hermione Granger.”

* * *

Oh, he was playing my song, all right. “I thought men like you went looking for trouble,” I said, as he drew near. I could smell his aftershave and the leather holster of his gun, and my nipples got hard. “Like looking for a snack in the fridge.”

He flicked his too-long hair out of his eyes, and leaned in for the kill. “Oh, you’re the kind of trouble I normally run away from,” he said, his gaze locked on my lips. “But something tells me you and normal don’t play well together.”

“Smart man,” I whispered, as we kissed.

* * *

**Part Two**

I heard a phrase once: ‘only comes around once in a lifetime’. They created that phrase for dames like Hermione Granger. It’s a fancy-pants way of saying they can only kill you once.

I could tell, just by the way she sauntered into my office, one hip at a time, like she owned the joint. And if that kiss was any indication of her other talents, it was a sure bet she’d be leading me around by the cock in no time.

She was going to be the death of me. I couldn’t think of a better way to go.

* * *

Hermione broke off that kiss so well I didn’t even know I was broken. “I’m the independent type, Snape,” she began, and took another puff of her cigarette. She was sizing me up with those big brown eyes, like she knew all my stats just by looking at me. “But I need a man for this job. A real man.” Her eyes darted down to my crotch, and my cock did a Hail Mary. “A man who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.”

“Looking for buried treasure, doll?” I asked, and poured us both a drink. I needed one.

* * *

She laughed, a low throaty sound that turn my blood to fire. “I’m looking for my husband, Snape,” she said, cool as you please. To my credit, I didn’t choke on my scotch. Suddenly, I didn’t want her husband to be found.

But I’m a private dick, and even private dicks have to pay the bills. “Let’s start with the facts.”

Hermione sighed, and for a moment, she was just that small-town girl made good, the kind that grew into her looks late, after the spots cleared and the braces were removed. The kind of girl that understood her worth.

* * *

“I married money. I’d never had any, and I never had love, and I thought the two were interchangeable,” she began. “So when money came to town, I was there to meet the train.”

“Spare me the bad poetry, sweetheart. When, where, how, why. That’s all I wanna know.”

She stubbed out her cigarette with an impatient gesture. “My husband disappeared from work two days ago. Nothing out of the ordinary, no strange calls, no unexpected guests at his office.”

I knew all this, of course. Having friends in low places has benefits.

And I also knew where he was.


	5. The Phoenix

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draught Challenge, 2016

Each step brings a puff of dust, and without the wind to carry it away, it drifts back down over her booted feet. Hermione looks around at the barren, desolate environment, squinting in the harsh, unnatural glare of the sun.

Why the hell is she here? She could sift through the clues, but what good would it do?

She kneels down, and allows the ashes and rust to run through her fingers. No trace, not even a bone, a button, a tooth, to show the world that Severus Snape was here, left to die in this ruined, burned-out Shrieking Shack.

* * *

It hasn’t rained for weeks here. A pall hangs over the blackened relic, as if it knows it is a crypt, a monument to a dark and misspent life. Hermione questions herself, her sanity, her motivation. The war is over, the celebrations fading, and yet here she is, still kicking around shards of broken glass, along with her depression.

If she could find some trace of Snape’s life, would it somehow validate her own? It is a question she truly doesn’t want to answer, because it feels as if she wants to join him, anonymous and forgotten. Why live, then?

* * *

She turns, and sees the figure standing by the Whomping Willow. They are both so still they could be a photograph. He is all blacks and whites; black clothing, pale skin. The dust chokes Hermione, making her cough so hard tears form in her eyes, and roll down her dusty cheeks.

Snape watches her with a dangerous mixture of uncertainty and pity. “What exactly are you looking for, Miss Granger?” He says. His voice is as dry and cracked as the ground. He nods toward the blackened hulk behind her. “What do you expect to find there, of all places?”

* * *

Hermione stares at her former teacher, a man she last saw bleeding out his life on the grimy floor of this very building. He is the embodiment of magic and power and mistakes and missed chances. “I’m looking for answers,” she replies.

His mouth curves into a smile that carries no malice, no derision. “Indeed.” His smile fades into something more wistful. “However, since I am no longer your teacher, I’m afraid I have none to give.”

He turns away, and Hermione’s heart cramps painfully in her chest. “No! You’re wrong. Please, you’re the only one who does,” she pleads.

* * *

She walks away from the empty monument without a backward glance. Tentatively, she reaches out, and touches his sleeve. He is alive, and whole, and clean, and different.

“Can-could we talk, Professor?”

“I don’t have the answers,” he repeats emphatically. “Whatever you seek, you’ll have to find it yourself.” His expression softens. “But when you find it, we’ll talk.” That secret smile again. “Yes, Hermione. We’ll talk.”

Something in her stirs at last: If he, of all wizards, can rise from these ashes clean and changed, then so can she.

A breeze lifts his hair; in the distance, thunder rolls.


	6. The Frozen Tower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ice Castles Challenge, 2016

The air at the top of the Tower hurt to breathe; it stung his face and made his eyes water. It was heavy with the white mist of his own breath, and the nostalgic melancholy of the season. He came here as penance. Since the world apparently was determined to exonerate his deeds, Severus long ago decided that he would not.

As time passed, the Tower became the embodiment of his isolation and his reclamation. Standing on its crenellated battlements, he accepted his role as Headmaster, defender of Hogwarts. A Prince locked frozen in a prison of his own making.

* * *

Below, he heard shouts and laughter. His faculty, along with the few students staying over, were playing in the snow. Hooch and Pomona lead teams in a fierce snowball fight. Filius and Hagrid were demonstrating their snowman-making skills.

And there _she_ was, Professor Hermione Granger, stretched out on the snow-covered ground, waving her arms and legs back and forth, like a lazy swimmer, creating an angel in the snow. Had he ever played so innocently?

She smiled just for him; her laughter reached even this high tower. Suddenly, the warmth of Spring no longer seemed so very far away


	7. Clothes Make The Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Formal Robes Challenge, 2016

The tiny boat skipped and bounced like a pebble over the North Sea. Hermione grimly held on to her seat, and willed herself not to be sick. The choppy waves, combined with the dread of returning to Azkaban, made her stomach churn. Only her mission calmed her; today, she was taking her lover home.

The Dementors were gone, but like the oily residue that remains after the deepest cleaning, their creosote energy would always remain. Azkaban would never be free of their leeching, soul-destroying taint. Two years of this place would break the strongest of men. Severus _had_ been strong.

He barely glanced up from his grimy cot as she entered his cell. “Love,” she whispered, “Today’s the day. You’re going home.”

It seemed to take an eternity for Severus to raise his tired, patient eyes to hers. “Home,” he repeated, his voice rough from disuse. He looked down at his hands, grimy and still in his lap. “How can I after this?”

Hermione’s heart broke at little more, as it had broken each and every moment of the two years they spent apart. “You can and you will,” she insisted, pushing the greasy pall of Azkaban from her mind.

Severus stood naked, passive, eyes downcast. Modesty had no place here; neither did defiance. He endured Hermione’s strongest and most abrasive cleaning spells with no more reaction than a sleepwalker. She knew she needed to wake him up, to bring him back to himself, or he would never leave Azkaban, no matter how far away they traveled from this place.

She produced a dark garment from her bag. His favourite robe, his finest, his grandest. Beautiful in its austerity, dignified in its formality, comfortable in its familiarity.

His expression changed.

He donned his beautiful robe, and became Severus Snape again.


	8. Preparation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Formal Robes Challenge, 2016

It was long and narrow. Without the life force to fill it, there was nothing imposing about it. Emptied of its owner, it carried no intimidation, no personality.

Hermione laid the robe on the bed, face up, and smoothed the wrinkles from the fine fabric. Absently, she stroked the velvet cuffs, ran her fingers over the long line of buttons.

The first tear dropped on the arm, and disappeared into the magic fibres. She vanished the blood and venom from the collar, and repaired the shoulder.

He would never want to be seen in anything less than his best.


	9. Nothing New To See

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Present Tense Challenge

He has a mantra; he repeats it every day. It reminds him why he is here, and not…wherever.

I am…I do…I will…

The words anchor him in the now; force his head forward like a bridle, forbidding him to look back.

She never looks back. It is hard for her to recall those dark days with any clarity.

Talk of the war is less frequent now, and she is grateful. She no longer has to leave the room every time Tom Riddle’s name is mentioned.

Ask her, and she will tell you there is no past; there is only now.

* * *

They are latitude and longitude, each coming from a different point of the compass, each determined to survive. Severus is Janus─longing to look back. Hermione is Lethe, refusing to.

Theirs is a long walk to reach one another. It is mined with memories of death and pain and the inexorable feeling of helplessness.

Severus understands that in some way, he must teach Hermione to face the past, and she must instruct him in the way to live in the present.

They know they cannot do it alone. Perhaps together they will find something worth living for in the unanticipated future.


	10. Standing On The Rainbow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Toenails Challenge 2016

Even at his most sly, obvious, manipulative, Slytherin worst, it is very hard to deny Severus Snape anything. He expects more than he lets on, and yet he is genuinely appreciative of Hermione’s thoughtful little gifts. Though he is not a wizard given to overly-romantic gestures, he has carved her heart to its very sinew with the tenderest moments of thoughtfulness.

“I should like to paint your toenails,” he announces that evening. His words and manner are as stiff as his collar.

“Why?” she asks.

“Is an explanation compulsory to permitting the act?” he retorts.

Hermione smiles. “Not at all.”

* * *

“This is new,” she says, as he pulls her bare feet into his lap. He says nothing, but merely glances up at her as he opens a small glass vial and dips a tiny brush into the opening. Black, viscous liquid drips from the bristles, and he clasps her foot, steadying it against his thigh.

Hermione has never let anyone paint her toenails; she can’t be arsed to do it herself. But if she had the inclination, she certainly wouldn’t choose _black_.

“Severus, I’m not sure I─”

“Shh.” His downcast eyes hide behind long lashes even darker than the lacquer.

* * *

He starts perversely at her pinkie toe, stroking across the surface of the nail with all the delicacy of a calligrapher.

A black swipe appears at the end of her foot, then turns blue.

Across her senses burst a myriad of sensations; the salty spray of sea air from their first holiday at Freshwater Bay. The taste of the chocolate-covered blueberries he feeds her when the migraines come.

“Severus?”

He doesn’t look up from his handiwork. Instead, he continues to paint each nail with slow, meticulous strokes, his brow furrowed in concentration, his burning, formidable focus solely on his work.

* * *

Each toe is painted with tender attention, and each becomes a different colour, each colour the most perfect of its hue. In the bright orange, she feels the warmth of the sunrise that greeted them after their first night together. Her taste buds recall the sweet, heady wine that toasted their first new year in the rich purple. The flaming red of the gown she wore on their wedding night whispers against her skin.

Taste. Touch. Sight. Sound.

“I am painting our memories,” he explains, “that you may walk with them every day. This way, you will never lose them.”


	11. If You Can't Beat 'Em

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wizarding Board Games Challenge 2016 - This will make more sense if you have already read a story of mine called Father Figure. Not owned by me, and neither are the Games. Never let it be said I couldn’t state the obvious with the best of them.

First, there was ‘What Say You?’ The game that started it all. Hermione always smiles when Narcissa suggests playing it for their monthly games night. She and Severus share a secret look, and he surreptitiously touches the thin silver chain at his wrist.

Lucius cheats, as usual. He just can’t help himself.

“What new delights have you brought us this evening?” he purrs, preparing to wipe the board with his largesse and unsportsmanlike conduct.

“Oh, I think you’ll find this one quite illuminating,” Severus replies, purr for purr.

Holding up a long slender box, Hermione smiles. “Cards against Wizardkind.”


	12. Chat Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Old Joke Challenge 2016 - I ran out of time before the challenge was officially over, but I just had to get in my favourite bad joke. Come to think on it, it’s the only joke I actually know by heart… Also, a nod to Victoria Wood’s classic series, Dinnerladies.

Hermione was sitting in the Three Broomsticks with Lavender Brown, moodily watching wizard after wizard come in, find a companion to spend the evening with, then leave the pub. Her thoughts were on Professor Snape. She had been trying for six months to get up the courage to ask him out for a drink, but somehow each time she looked into those dark, unreadable eyes, her Gryffindor bravery tucked tail and slunk out of the room, and she with it.

She had been bemoaning her fate when Lavender said, “Oh, I’ve got a foolproof method of pulling. Watch this, love.”

* * *

She waited until an unknown wizard approached the bar, and ordered. As he waited, Lavender leaned over to him, and whispered conspiratorially, “Tickle your arse with a feather?”

The wizard spun toward her, a look of startled anger on his face. “What did you say to me?”

Lavender batted her large blue eyes and said, “I said, ‘particularly nasty weather’. Isn’t it?” She turned toward the door, nodding at the deluge bucketing down outside.

Mollified, the wizard sniffed. “I see.” Shortly after, he paid for his drink, then joined another group of men in the corner.

Lavender turned to Hermione.

* * *

“See how easy it is?”

“Do it again!”

Just then, a devastatingly handsome wizard leaned on the bar. “Firewhisky, please,” he said.

Lavender turned to Hermione. “That’s Tom! He’s the one I’m dying to have a thing with. Isn’t he just knicker-wettingly, groin-grindingly fab?”

Hermione laughed. “Go on, then. Give him your chat up line.”

Lavender took a bracing, encouraging breath. “Here goes, then.”

She scooted her bar stool a little closer, then leaned toward Tom. “Tickle your arse with a feather?”

Tom looked at her askance, then gave Lav a thousand-watt smile. “Hey, that sounds like a fun evening.”

* * *

Hermione shook her head in amazement as Lavender sauntered away on Tom’s arm. And wouldn’t you know it, just as they were leaving, Professor Snape rushed into the Broomsticks, brushing raindrops from his shoulders. He spied her, and nodded solemnly. Then, to Hermione’s excitement and consternation, he headed straight toward her.

“Professor Granger,” he said, in greeting.

“Professor Snape,” she replied, and composed herself. Her heart was pounding with nervous excitement. She was going to do it! She was going to use Lavender’s chat up line. And if he wasn’t amenable, well then, she’d make him think he’d misheard her.

* * *

_Tickle your arse with a feather….tickle….arse… tick….feather….arse….tickle…feather…_

“Professor Granger, are you quite sure you’re alright?” Severus asked, his eyes wary.

It was at that precise moment that Hermione realised she’d been rehearsing her chat up line under her breath. Her vision grew blurry; she was close to hyperventilating with nerves.

 _Tickle your arse with a feather._ She looked up into his stern face. _Tickle your arse with a feather. Tickle your─_

“Professor, what on earth is wrong with you?”

“Stick a feather up your arse?”

Snape spewed firewhisky in all directions. “What?”

Mortified, Hermione shouted, “Look at the fucking rain!”


	13. The Professor's Speech

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Radio Challenge - 2016. The title of this drabble is a bit of an homage to The King’s Speech, if you squint. This is dedicated to the great stgulik, for her excellent prompt, and to mywitch, who has injected such positive, loving energy into the fandom.

_“…and that concludes our special interview with Harry Potter, on The Bravest Man He Ever Knew. Stay tuned for our twentieth annual Happy Birthday tribute to Wizarding Britain’s hero─”_

“Imbeciles and dunderheads, the lot of them,” Severus grumbled. He switched off the radio with an impatient snap.

Hermione looked up from her book. “Oy, you. I was looking forward to that.”

“It’s the same crap as last year!”

She smiled. “And they always conclude with a recording of your first-year speech. You know I love to hear that.”

He scoffed. “I can’t possibly imagine why. It’s nothing new. Every Hogwarts Alumnus under forty has heard it firsthand.”

Hermione tugged on his sleeve until he sat down beside her. “Those were very important words, Severus,” she said gently. “They made us realise we had the ability to do amazing things. _We_ had the power to brew fame and bottle glory.”

She touched the faded scar at his throat. “They made me realise _I_ had the power to put a stopper in death.”

Severus’ scowl softened, and changed into a look reserved only for her. Then he switched on the radio.

Hermione knew once again she had beaten the odds and won.


	14. Signal Boost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Radio Challenge, 2016. I’m not exactly sure I went in the right direction with this, but the lovely thing about GS100 is that, if I didn’t, I can always come back and fix it. The main thing I wanted to do was convey winter and night, and that quiet that stretches for miles when I’m outside with nothing but the firepit and the stars to keep me company.

* * *

It happened at night, when the clear, cold air amplified the sky and turned up the volume of the world. It was a faint, distant voice, coming through the Wizarding wireless, jolting her from an uneasy dream.

_Can you hear me? Are you there?_

Hermione twisted the dial to full volume. There was nothing but the steady hum of the tubes and the occasional spark and crackle of the radio wave, moving through the air at the speed of light.

Hermione put her head on her pillow, and hardly dared to breathe. “Where are you?” she whispered. _Who are you?_

* * *

She took the wireless onto the roof, hoping for better reception. Huddled against the fierce January wind, feeling foolish and lonely, she listened until her ears ached with cold.

_Is there anyone there? Can you hear me?_

“Yes! Yes, I can!” Hermione cried. “Where are you?”

The static whined in reply.

“But could the dead actually communicate? If their message and their spirit are powerful enough, can they make contact through, say, a radio?”

The Hogwarts ghosts stared at her blankly, then at one another. “What exactly is a ‘radio’?” queried Nearly-Headless Nick.

Hermione smiled wearily. “Never mind, Sir Nicholas.”

* * *

Hermione grew cold and discouraged. She magically boosted the signal, and made it visible. The lonely wave lashed through the air, snapping like a whip. It stretched out before her, blindly groping for the voice only she seemed capable of hearing.

Two more fruitless weeks passed. She heard signals from as far away as Moscow and India, but not the questing voice. Finally, she abandoned her lonely vigil on the roof and left her post, embracing her radio like a security blanket.

She stowed the wireless away, and wept. She started to consider the possibility she might be going mad.

* * *

_Hermione Granger?_

She bolted upright and raced to the wireless, throwing every revealing spell she could think of. The radio began to glow, as if lit up from within. Then _his_ voice came through, as clear and rich as it had ever been while he was alive. “I’m here. Hermione. I’m here.”

The radio’s dial lit the room, making it as light as day “Professor Snape!” she cried. “Where are you? Are you alive?”

There was the slightest hesitation. “I don’t think so.”

A wave of sadness swept over her, and tears filled her eyes. “How can I help, Professor─”

* * *

“I meant to say, I don’t think Wizarding Britain needs to know.”

She grew still. “I doubt they would believe me even if I told them, sir.”

To her surprise, he chuckled. “They’re very good at _that_ , at least.”

Hermione stared at the innocent-looking radio. “I don’t know which news is better – that you’re alive, or that I’m not going completely barmy.”

It was a moment before Snape replied. “Not that you’ll remember, but it does feel good to know someone is glad I’m not dead, nevertheless.”

Her heart began to pound. “Surely you can’t actually _Obliviate_ someone like this?”

* * *

Severus Snape lowered his wand. It wasn’t fair; he had, after all, reached out to her in the first place. _On a whim. A moment of loneliness and weakness. You didn’t really expect anyone to actually answer, did you?_

He thought of Hermione Granger, in her little narrow bed, curled up asleep, dreaming whatever dreams a girl like Hermione dreamed. Had the signal of her own loneliness reached out over the curling radio waves to him too?

Severus switched off his radio. It _was_ lovely knowing someone was happy to discover he was alive.

If only for a little while.


	15. End of Term

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas Challenge 2015

* * *

Funny, the little lies we tell ourselves. It wasn’t attraction, it was respect of authority. It wasn’t lust, it was thirst for knowledge. It wasn’t love, it was admiration.

Here, in Hogwarts’ library, Hermione watched the Headmaster, hands behind his back, solemnly perusing a section of books on botany. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the younger, harsher version of him that resided in her memory. Raw and bitter, like cheap and badly-prepared coffee. _That_ Snape had been astringently unapproachable. Every encounter became a reason for regret.

Was there anything left of that man now? Hermione asked herself.

* * *

She opened her eyes to find him looking at her, his expression puzzled and wary. “Am I keeping you awake, Miss Granger?” he asked bemusedly.

Before she could answer, he bowed slightly, turned on his heel, and left her to her dusty volumes.

Students came and went, bringing overdue books and requests for sections they had no business investigating and mopey sighs while previous boyfriends flirted with others across the study hall.

Hermione’s eyes kept drifting back to the place where _he_ had stood, quiet and contemplative, and wondered what on earth she could conjure up to lure him back.

* * *

Christmas approached, and with it came herds of revising Ravenclaws, scheming Slytherins practicing the latest cheating techniques and cheerful Hufflepuffs, too busy enjoying one another’s company to be too much of a nuisance. Her own House, Hermione ruefully noticed, put on a brave face of being prepared for final term exams, but surreptitiously cut their eyes over to the Slytherin table, hoping to pick up pointers.

The Headmaster drifted in and out, looking preoccupied and studious himself. Hermione smiled at him, and asked if he was looking for something in particular.

The look he gave her tormented her for days.

* * *

_Gods, I’m pathetic,_ she thought.

Christmas Eve, and the Faculty party was a lively affair, but Hermione once again found herself back in the library, among her beloved books. In her sexy. shape-hugging party finery, she had felt self-conscious and false, laughing and toasting with the others, when it was Severus Snape she wanted to be with.

He had kept to himself, as usual, but again she noticed it was not with the old, grim, stay-away-from-me glare that she remembered. He spoke to everyone and even smiled occasionally, but more than once she caught him heaving a heavy, wistful sigh.

* * *

As if sensing her thoughts, he looked up from his chair, and caught her staring at him. Silently he toasted her with his glass, and Hermione nodded in return. “Time to go,” she had said to no one in particular, and left.

Suddenly, she felt so lonesome she knew she would either cry, say something stupid, or gods forbid, Floo Ron for a holiday pity shag. That he would probably still take her up on it in spite of the fact he was married to Lavender both comforted and disturbed her.

Only one person noticed her furtive exit, and followed.

* * *

Hermione poured herself a glass of wine, and lit the candles. The aroma of books soothed her, and she stretched to ease the last of the tension from her shoulders.

She was not alone.

He moved silently, but she sensed his presence before a warm hand caressed her shoulder. “I suppose,” he began, “some would think a library an unusual place to be on a night like this.”

His voice was soft, his breath warm against her cheek. A delicious thrill of excitement raced down her spine. “Oh, I don’t know,” she replied shakily. “It seems rather appropriate to me.”

* * *

“I see,” he replied, and those two words held a universe of knowledge. He moved closer. “And since you haven’t screamed, ran away, or hexed me, I can only assume that my presence hasn’t diminished the festive atmosphere.”

_Too bloody true,_ Hermione thought. She leaned back until his entire body, warm and solid and welcome, pressed against hers. His lips brushed sensuously against her nape.

She whispered, “Ever ah-heard of The Thousand Book Club?”

He chuckled softly, and she moaned when he cupped her breast, his touch gentle and sure. “Can’t say I have, Miss Granger. Please, do enlighten me.”


	16. The Snow Has Other Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas at Hogwarts Challenge 2015

If Christmas had a point, Severus had long forgotten it, other than another excuse for people to be happy while he was miserable. If it carried any higher or nobler purpose, it had been lost on him years ago.

It only served to remind him that childhood was supposed to be a gentle, indulgent time. Had he ever been gently indulged? He didn’t think so. Christmas set him apart, and brought into stark relief the differences of those who had, and those who took away.

He avoided Christmas like Scrooge. Since he also hated self-pity, he called it ‘being realistic’.

* * *

Hermione had long stopped believing in hell as anything more than a man-made construct, but if it did exist, she hoped that Severus’ parents had front row seats. Not just for the cruelty, though there appeared to have been a fair amount of that, but for the everyday, casual heartlessness one finds in the household of indifferently abusive parents.

She didn’t have to be told Severus had a hard time in what passed for his childhood; it was in his face, the sometimes startled look in his eyes when he was too tired to wear his aloof masque of pretense.

* * *

That first Christmas, it snowed at Hogwarts. Severus stomped through the drafty courtyard, scattering groups of students like startled snowbirds, and they avoided him to his heart’s content. Only the newly-hired Professor Hermione Granger seemed immune to his glower and grumble.

From the moment she was introduced as Hogwarts’ newest Transfiguration professor, she had treated him as an equal, even going so far as to engage him in conversation during the Halloween feast.

Later, he could only attribute it to her smile and Hogwarts’ famous Treacle Tart. He had surprised them both by responding. It was his own fault, really.

* * *

He was a solitary soul, quieter since the war, yet still able to cut the tongue out of a student at twenty paces if properly provoked. In other words, not nearly as much as when she was his student. It seemed to take a lot more to get his dander up; most days his classes seemed incapable of doing little more than giving it a nudge with a wet flannel.

By Christmas, Severus was on Hermione’s mind so often she caught herself writing his name on spare edges of parchment, usually in her best calligraphy with the most elaborate embellishments.

* * *

To those who knew them well, it was like watching two people dancing to the same tune while standing in two different rooms. Minerva had seen enough of Albus’ meddling not to attempt any matchmaking. Hermione would dive for cover, Severus would beat a hasty, snarling retreat into his laboratory and not be seen for days.

Minerva was a big believer in sitting back and allowing things to happen in their own time. Best to just let them blunder into one another’s arms. Besides, she could always jump in if they threatened to make a complete dog’s dinner of it.

Snow had fallen since dawn. The ghosts sang their eerily haunting carols, and the house-elves scurried around in their frantic attempt to outdo the previous Christmas Eve’s decorations. Fairy lights and the soft, mystical magic of the festive season cast a rosy, gauzy glow on the world.

Severus found her in the courtyard, gazing out into the falling snow, a wreath of soft, glowing light around her hair. There was a wistful melancholy in her face, and awash in the fairy magic, Hermione Granger was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

That was when he knew. He _knew_.

* * *

The next morning Christmas greeted him with bright sunlight glittering on the massive snowdrifts piled against the castle. Severus paused, and truly looked around him. The world looked different, somehow, cleaner, new.

He spent the day in quiet contemplation. Not his usual Christmas sulk; far from it. He seemed to be trembling, on the edge of bursting with something he had never truly known before.

That night, after the faculty had opened gifts and retired, he approached her.

“I haven’t given you my gift yet, Hermione,” he began, making a poor show of hiding his nerves.

She watched him carefully.

* * *

“There’s only one thing I want from you, Severus Snape,” she said, and the flush of her cheeks told him just how much those words had cost her to say.

He closed his eyes, and the soft magic of the moment seeped into his being, his soul, like cool water to parched earth. “It is old and a bit shabby, and I can’t say it’s much of a bargain.”

She surprised him by putting her arms around his neck, and touching her lips to his. “My mum says the best gifts are the ones you want someone to give _you_.”


	17. Remind Me Again Why I'm Here?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Closet Noise Challenge 2015

They faced the closet door, wands at the ready. “Ready in three. I’ll go in first,” Severus whispered. “Three─”

“I’m no damsel in distress, Severus,” Hermione hissed. “It’s just a closet. Who said I needed to be rescued?”

He gave her a withering look. “Then why _did_ you call me to your rooms, Professor?”

Why had she called him, indeed? Because noises emanating from her closet sounded suspiciously like a boggart? Or Dark Wizards, having infiltrated Hogwarts, were at present hiding in her closet, ready to pounce?

Or was it just a good excuse to bring him to her room?


	18. More Than

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mysterious Ways Challenge 2015

He wasn’t a wizard to her. Wizards were purveyors of every day magic; wizards were her peers, the boys she had attended school with, the placid, sometimes bland men who lived their lives reciting those common-or-garden spells that spoke of a daily, mundane type of skill any half-witted dullard with magical blood could produce.

To Hermione, Severus was no more kin to those common wizards than Merlin. His was a mysterious, holy kind of magic. He was touched with more than ability, more than a series of genetic codes charged with other-worldly magic.

To Hermione, her husband was a sorcerer.


	19. Holding On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Various Challenges, 2015

He watched her in silence as she forced him against the corridor wall, her head bent, pink lower lip caught between her teeth. He was breathing hard, his head full of confusing thoughts as she pushed the buttons of his coat through their holes, exposing him to her.

“Granger─”

“Shut up, Severus.”

Up he shut.

It would have been easy to remove her grasping hands from his chest, to stalk away, dignity and sanity intact. She wouldn’t have followed him, or mentioned the incident ever again.

Was he foolish enough to walk away from this slowly unfolding moment of desire?

* * *

Apparently not.

Severus repressed a shiver as skin met the air, but then Hermione pressed her lips against his fevered flesh. As his head fell back against the stone wall, the shiver he had resisted seemed to judder from his head down into his groin.

He tried to put his arms around her, but that, too, was rebuffed. “Stay if you want it, but this is my moment,” she murmured, as that open, wet mouth suckled as his nipple. His knees buckled, and he held onto the wall for dear life.

She gave him a wicked grin, then knelt down.


	20. Depends on Your POV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I May Be Mistaken Challenge 2015

“I may be─”

“Mistaken, Hermione.” Ron’s voice was sharp with accusation and impatience. “You’re mistaken.” He softened. “It was horrible, but old Snape couldn’t have survived that attack. I know he couldn’t have.”

Hermione bristled. _You know nothing, Ronald Weasley._ “Yes, I may be mistaken, but how would you feel if we found out he was still alive and we didn’t go back to check?” She glared at him until he toed the ground restlessly. “Merlin’s sake, Ron! At least come with me.”

They picked their careful way through the battle-wrecked grounds, Ron grumbling all the way. “This is ridiculous.”

* * *

Later, Ron told anyone who would listen (mainly Lavender Brown) that he had been the one who insisted they return to the Shrieking Shack. That is, until one evening when Severus Snape happened upon Weasley thrilling several young witches with the tale of his harrowing rescue.

Ron was holding court and loving it. “There was Snape, lying in a puddle of blood, gasping for help! Well, not to brag, mind you, but Hermione was panicking, so I just said, ‘Are you a witch or not? Quick, send a patronus for help before the old git pegs it!’”

“Excuse me.”

* * *

Ron flushed as Severus addressed his admirers. “You were saying, Weasley? Something about saving me single handedly?”

He stammered, growing ever more flustered as his former professor watched the advancing train wreck. Finally, Ron sputtered to silence.

“Indeed,” Snape purred, “I may be mistaken, but I seem to remember a different scenario entirely that night.” His brow rose challengingly. “Of course, I was incapacitated at the time, but…”

He reached for his companion, who smiled up at him. Tucking her hand in his arm, he asked, “How do you remember it, Hermione?”

Ron grimaced ruefully. “’Suppose I could’ve been mistaken.”


	21. The Objects In The Rearview MIrror May Appear Closer Than They Are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Label Challenge 2015

The odour was pervasive in the lab, but Hermione chose to ignore it. It was, after all, a laboratory; strange smells were a given.

The scent persisted throughout the Potions classroom, and she could see the surreptitious sniffs and odd looks as students worked through their lessons.

Severus drifted by her as she supervised the third years, and she stopped in mid-sentence.

The scent was _him_.

Later, when she thought of the next twenty seconds, she would long for her old time-turner. It wouldn’t have changed _what_ she said, but perhaps she could have distracted him with a major accident.

* * *

“Professor, why do you smell like coconuts?”

His thunderous look told her she’d trod on the Blast-ended Skrewt. “My office, Granger. Now!”

Meekly, she followed him to her execution.

Once behind the closed, tightly-warded door, he tossed a vial to her. Instead of being angry, he looked embarrassed. “It’s supposed to be a potion for restoring eyesight. I rubbed it in and now the smell won’t dissipate.”

Hermione looked at the label and turned away. To laugh would be fatal. “It’s supposed to be ingested.”

Frowning, he said, “It said, ‘use topically’.”

She shook her head. “It says, ‘infused tropically’.”


	22. The Road Not Taken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Insomnia Challenge

He lies in his cell, and awaits the kiss.

He awoke from his near fatal attack in Azkaban, guilty of murder, espionage and treason to the Wizarding world. Not even the great Harry Potter’s personal entreaty would sway the Wizengamot.

The guards are cruel, but leave him alone. They bring him rancid food, which he doesn’t eat. They taunt him from beyond his prison walls, but he doesn’t hear.

He is somewhere between the waking and sleeping world, trying to remember Lily, which he can’t. Potter has all his memories.

And so he lies in his cell, awaiting his kiss.

* * *

“All he does is sleep,” he hears them say.

“Open the door,” a voice commands. It is soft and feminine and sounds both strong and afraid.

A gentle hand touches his arm. “Professor?”

He isn’t there; he is traveling down that road, the path he was never supposed to take…

He is Gryffindor, in love with Lily, friend of James and Sirius and Remus. His Patronus is an eagle, and together Wings, Mooney, Padfoot and Prongs are the Marauders, both terrors and darlings of Hogwarts.

He fights for the Greater Good, and he and Lily are in hiding with Harry…

* * *

“Professor!”

He doesn’t respond. He is no one’s professor. He is Lily’s husband, and they are fighting Death Eaters, fighting and losing because he never learned the power games and the cunning tricks to keep himself and his family alive. He is a young man, dying for the Light, watching his beautiful wife weeping over his pain-wracked body, because Voldemort does not wish his enemies to die quickly and quietly.

The Dementors, rapturous in their desire to draw every ounce of beauty from his soul, sent him down that road not taken, the road he was never supposed to take.

* * *

He is floating in that place between awake and dreaming, afraid to wake to the Dementor’s kiss, afraid to return to his other death. It is that place that opens him like a flower, and as much as he tries to fight it, he is caught between. He cannot feel the pain of living or the agony of dying.

There is a kiss; it feels soft at first, like a lover, but it pulls him forward, sucking the fear and pain and _Severus_ from him, until he is no longer the man he was or the man he will become.

* * *

He awakens like Sleeping Beauty to a soft world of morning sunlight and clean sheets. A wild-haired witch smiles at him through her tears. “We did it, Professor! We overturned the sentence. You’re free.”

Severus stares in disbelief. His noble life as a martyr never was, his dark life as a spy is behind him. “Am I dreaming?” he asks, hopefully. The young woman smiled and shakes her head.

“No, sir. You are very much awake.”

He looks around this new free world, afraid to close his eyes. He will never sleep soundly again for the rest of his life.


	23. Never Before And Never Again

Severus opened his eyes, and wished he hadn’t.

_Pillock._

A groan drifted from the sepulcher of his suffering body. He wondered when one got old enough to know better. Apparently he’d not yet reached that august age.

_Never again. I mean it, this time._

He rolled over, wincing. Chasing firewhisky with gillywater – what was he thinking?

_Never again will I let that wild-haired little witch goad me—_

A soft, warm body snuggled against his shoulder, wild-haired, naked. “Never again what?”

He froze. “Did we—?”

“Oh, yeah,” Hermione purred. “So what are you never doing again?”

He smiled. “Never mind.”


	24. The Inevitable Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Storm Challenge 2015

Something had to give.

For too long, this, whatever it was, had brewed between them, dark and humid and waiting. Hermione knew she was out of her depth with Severus Snape, but that didn’t dispel this feeling of impending…

What?

For two years they had danced this tango of tension and frustration with one another. Resentment to grudging respect to puzzlement to suppression to this. This watchful, simmering, spiraling _thing_ between them. And her only consolation was that he seemed equally as puzzled, as frustrated, as resentful of this seething, boiling tightrope upon which they teetered.

Something had to give.

* * *

Did the storm bring him, or did it follow him?

This mad, angry passion that rubbed against them like static had been allowed to build for too long. She saw him, striding toward her, like a dark, welcomed spectre summoned on the wailing, swirling wind. The air crackled like a corona around him, and they collided with a sizzle of magic and lust that had no words beyond the ones that stuttered from their lips.

Hermione was out of her depth, yes. But she drowned no quicker, lost no more ground, gave up no more secrets than did her lover.

* * *

There is no tension greater than the approaching squall, no moment more eagerly anticipated than the deluge of the heavens. There is no victory sweeter than the taming of the tempest. Words are only so much noise. The gentle rain that follows carries more meaning than any words ever could.

They are creatures of habit. They know it is coming. They know something has to give. And when it comes, they meet it eagerly.

Peace can be found by giving in to the inevitable, frightening future. But what can be discovered about themselves each time they surrender to the storm?


	25. We'll Collide On Dry Land

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Storm Challenge 2015. Title comes from a Tina Turner song, I’ll Be Thunder.

The flash of lightning lit up the night in a strobe of stark, blinding light. Hermione tensed, then jumped as its brother thunder boomed through the castle like a cannon’s roar.

Warm hands caressed her shoulders, making her jump again. “Steady, Granger,” a bemused voice murmured in her ear, its deep timbre carrying its own honey and thunder. “You’re not frightened of a storm front, are you?”

She smiled, then turned to her lover. “I’ve managed to weather everything _you’ve_ thrown at me, Severus. What’s a little thunder after that?”

“Come to bed then, and we’ll make our own storm.”


	26. Smoke And Spice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Toblass, 2014

He closed his eyes as his lips parted, taking in the silken flesh with a tender delicacy that bordered on tentative. His dark brows arched in surprised bliss, and he moaned rapturously.

“Lovely,” Hermione whispered huskily, as Severus feasted.

He opened his eyes and gave her a smoky, replete look as he licked his lips. “Perhaps,” he purred, “I could be persuaded to do it again.” He took her hand, and his warm, velvet tongue flicked over her fingers, his lush, smouldering gaze never leaving hers. Hermione gasped in delight, as each digit was caressed, and teased, and salaciously cleaned.

Perspiration beaded his pale brow as he plunged in again, devouring, learning each secret as it was presented to him. “Now, this is quite lovely indeed,” he said, his sinful voice dropping, growing darker with each moment. “And now, it’s your turn, witch.”

Hermione happily obliged him, holding his long, slender hands in hers, caressing the tips of each finger, licking, sucking, nipping the work-roughened pads, savouring the salty-musky juices that dripped from his expressive, warm hands.

And all the time, that secretive, knowing, promising smile never left his face. All the while, his glowing hot eyes held hers enthralled.

They neared their climactic moment, each moaning in bliss, demanding more. Finally, they fell back onto the velvet cushions beneath them; panting, sated, sweat drenched, breathless and satisfied.

Severus mopped his brow and sighed. “That was…. interesting.”

“Oh, Severus! Would it kill you to give a compliment?”

He shrugged. “Well, no. It simply wasn’t what I was expecting.”

“But you liked it?”

He smirked lazily. “Of course I did.”

Hermione beamed. “I knew you’d enjoy Moroccan food! Especially if we fed one another by hand,” she added, rewarding him with a spice-flavoured kiss. “Now, how about ice cream for dessert?”


	27. Green Eyed Monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lit Nut Challenge, 2015

It would be easy to say that Hermione was jealous. But jealousy was a petty thing, shallow and vain, usually visible to either the recipient or the reason.

Severus gave all signs of being oblivious.

There were times when she almost hated him, but hatred was too large a thing for someone you didn’t really know.

Every day, she watched him in his work, in his leisure time, and wanted him. But every time she thought she might break through, the ghost of Lily would rise between them, and taunt her with the words, “He’ll never be free from me.”


	28. Auld Lang Syne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New Year Challenge, 2014

The song, to Hermione, always sounded sweet and sad; not a song to welcome the new year, but to look back on times past with both affection and regret.

She looked around the party, and felt the melancholy romance of the song tugging at her heart – she, Hermione Jean Granger, stalwart friend of Harry Potter, was about to burst into tears in the middle of a party of cheering, kissing, drinking, joyful witches and wizards.

She looked at the huge clock, and knew she’d never make it to midnight at this rate.

And so brave Gryffindor she was, she fled.

* * *

She ran through Hogwarts halls, seeing not the restored portraits, the newly scrubbed walls and the polished stone floors. She only saw the horrific battle she had fought, the dead she had passed in her mad rush to stay alive, the anguish of being good but not good enough to save those who fell.

The raucous voices followed her from the Great Hall, singing “Auld Lang Syne”. Hermione quickened her pace to a trot, then a run, but she couldn’t escape them.

The tears that had threatened now streamed down her face. Where was the cup of kindness for her?

* * *

Severus had also fled the merriment as soon as he was able. Minerva had browbeat him into going to that infernal mess she called a New Year’s Eve party, but thankfully the crowds had made it easy to slip away undetected.

From his place in the shadows, Severus saw the young woman rush past him, her soft sobs echoing down the corridor. He was sure he could not help her; perhaps she wouldn’t want him to. Just the same, he thought he understood. New Year’s Eve was supposed to be a glimpse into the future, but that was a lie.

* * *

It had a way of making you look back at old times, old tears, old regrets. Time was something you could not predict, could not anticipate; all one could do was look back, and for Severus, time was a difficult story to replay. If the talented and golden Hermione Granger was blindsided by the tears of ‘auld lang syne’, what chance did he have?

For so long all he had done was look back. He had chained himself to the gates of his duty, and had crucified himself there. What would it feel like, he wondered, to set himself free?

* * *

He followed Hermione from a distance, letting her cry out her feelings. She jumped when he touched her shoulder, then let out a little startled sob and shook her head, as if expecting the worst from him. What, he thought, if he gave her his best? Would that erase the year’s grime and soil, and make him new again? He would never know until he found out.

Impulsively, Severus put his arms around her, and she stiffened, as if afraid. “Don’t─don’t cry, Hermione,” he began hesitantly. “Don’t let the song win. We don’t have to drink to auld lang syne.”

* * *

Hermione looked up into his face, confused. He nodded, adding, “Don’t look back.” He was breathing hard, and fighting the urge to laugh. “We don’t have to let tonight be about regret. Let it be about your future.” He stopped, thunderstruck. “ _My_ future.”

Light and understanding was dawning in her pretty face, and he held her close. “We don’t have to punish anymore ourselves for what has happened. Make it a new year, Hermione,” he added fiercely. “Look this year in the eye, and never look back.”

She smiled, and wonder of wonders, kissed his cheek. “Happy New Year, Severus.”

* * *

The clock struck midnight; they heard a roar of voices, and magical fireworks lit up the sky. Hermione thought of the battle, the flames raining down from above. “No,” Severus said, his beautiful voice firm. “Don’t, Hermione. See them for what they are, not for the memories they resurrect.”

His arms were warm, and solid. It felt good to nestle within them. The sky turned red, then blue, then purple, lighting their faces. Severus looked down at her, and wonder of wonders, kissed her cheek.

“Will you face the new year with me over dinner?” he asked formally.

She nodded.


	29. Father Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Father Time Challengem 2014

It’s taken him three years.

Three years, two months, eighteen days, four hours and twenty-two minutes – give or take.

And he’s measured it all in seconds, in moments, in episodes, dramas and victories.

Severus Snape, for all of his many monikers good and bad, is a father now.

Hermione tells him on a daily basis he is a good one, but he doubts, oh, he doubts.

Then, he turns around one day and realises his daughter thinks he’s wonderful. She is calling him names of her own.

“Da”, and “Daddy”.

Father. Now, he is playing the role of his life.


	30. The Sunshine State of Affairs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2014\. This story sort of defied being placed into any particular challenge, but it was what I was given.

Hermione hated feeling this intimidated. Very few adults had the strength to turn her own insecurities inside out like Professor Snape, but it didn’t stop Hermione from squaring her shoulders and marching down to his office.

“Just be polite,” she told herself, and rehearsed her request again. “Sir, I was hoping to get some extra credit on the Levi-Potion project, but I haven’t been able to find what I’m looking for. Perhaps if I had access to the Restricted Section…”

She paused at his office door, heart pounding. “Be a Gryffindor,” she ordered herself, and raised her hand to knock.

* * *

The door was partially opened, and though it would be polite (if not prudent) to announce herself, Hermione could not. She was too busy staring at the man who had helped save the Wizarding World.

Snape was seated at his desk, his normally dour expression blank and curiously soft. He was holding something, and at first she thought it was a ball or a bit of clay he was molding in his large hands. Long, graceful fingers pulled at it, then peeled the cover away. From across the room the enticing scent of orange filled her nostrils─bright, tangy, and sweet.

* * *

Hermione watched as he delicately parted the fruit, opening it with gentle fingers, and separated the first segment from the rest. His lips closed around it, his face rapt with his evident enjoyment as the heady scent filled the room.

Standing motionless, Hermione watched her professor as he took another, then a third segment of the orange, a look of pleasure on his severe face. Snape licked the sticky juices from his fingers; Hermione’s entire body flushed. She swallowed hard when she realised she was salivating.

 _Gods, I’ve_ got _to stop perving over Snape,_ she thought guiltily. _He’d be mortified._

* * *

“You might as well stop skulking behind the door, Miss Granger,” Snape drawled. His sudden declaration actually made her jump. He sounded both resigned and amused. “Come in. I daresay you won’t leave until you’ve stated your request.”

Hermione’s face burned, but she meekly walked into the room. He was cleaning his hands with a towel, his stern, intractable mask firmly back in place. He sat back, and laced his fingers ( _they would smell of oranges!_ she thought) and placed them in his lap.

She took a deep breath and launched into her speech. “Sir, I was hoping to─”

“No.”

* * *

It took a beat before she registered his reply, and she opened her mouth to protest. Then, she looked, really looked at him. He didn’t look angry, he didn’t look smug. He looked…bemused. He indicated the seat beside his desk. “Sit, Miss Granger.”

She dutifully obeyed, and to her surprise, he pushed the remaining orange half to her. She nodded her thanks, and pulled away a segment of her own. He watched as she bit into the section, and Hermione sighed happily as the tangy fruit burst on her tongue. “Liquid sunshine,” she managed, her mouth full of the taste.

* * *

Professor Snape nodded. “Professor Flitwick returned from the States with them. From a place called Florida.”

Hermione smiled. “I’ve been there! With my parents…” Her smile faded.

Long ago. Long before she sent her parents away, never to return. The fruit took on a bitter edge in her mouth, and the mellow scent in the air became a bittersweet note of regret in her heart.

She rose. “As you have already denied my request, sir, I’ll apologise for interrupting you.” She turned to go.

“Don’t you wish to know _why_ I am denying it, Hermione?” he asked, his voice soft.

* * *

She turned, puzzled, and he sighed. “Sit down. Please.” Snape waited until she was seated, then nodded toward the orange. “Go ahead and finish. You don’t eat enough.”

Surprised, she smiled her thanks and ate while he peeled a second orange. “I said no, Miss Granger, because I had rather hoped you would ask me personally for help.”

She paused, the segment halfway to her lips. “I didn’t want to impose.”

Snape laughed, but it was a mirthless sound. “Would you be terribly shocked, Miss Granger, if I told you I would actually welcome such an imposition?”

Hermione gaped wordlessly.

* * *

Snape watched her, and his softening gaze hardened again. “Very well,” he muttered, and pulled out a quill and a small piece of parchment. “The Restricted Section it is─”

“No!”

They both started at her adamant cry. Hermione looked into her professor’s eyes, those haunted, _haunting_ eyes, and realised what she was seeing, what she had _seen_ since returning to Hogwarts to finish school.

Impulsively, she pulled apart the remaining two orange segments, and offered one to him. “I’d love to impose, if you’d have me,” she said, quietly.

Wordlessly, he put down his half-peeled orange, and took her hand.


	31. In The Quiet of The Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas Tree, Snow Challenge 2014

_Am I dead?_

_Is this the afterlife?_

The words reverberate through his head, and he sits upright, gasping in fear and clutching at his throat.

In the dark room, he faces the window. Snow silently glides by in fat, lazily see-sawing flakes, and his heartbeat slows. His hand drops from the phantom wound that healed over ten years ago, and he lies back, wondering why he has dreamed of death again.

_Because you were close enough to feel its cold fingers, and it will always be looking for the one that got away._

What that what happened? He ‘got away’?

* * *

He silently rises from his bed, wincing at the frigid stone floor beneath his bare feet. He gazes out the window into the snow with stunned gratitude. Every flake that falls, every rain drop that tattoos the ground, every sunbeam that casts its silvery moats into his office; each is an unexpected gift he never thought he would live to see.

In the window’s reflection he can see the room beyond, and the lovely Christmas tree draped with fairy lights and dozens of baubles. They look like soap bubbles, delicate and transitory, but this is an illusion. They are unbreakable.

* * *

There is a soft sound in the room, and he turns toward the curly-haired witch still sleeping in his bed. From here he can see the soft, graceful swell of her belly, and he is overwhelmed with the realisation that this is his life now, full of unasked-for gifts and unbreakable simplicity, and he no longer has to question why or if he deserves any of it.

Sometimes he feels as if he’s ‘gotten away’ with that as well.

He climbs back into his warm bed, next to his warm woman, and breathes in the life she has given him.


	32. Snape Leaves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leaves Challenge - written during one of my favourite parts of the story - their nights in the Forest of Dean.

There are many ways to describe Severus Snape, Hermione Granger thinks. Right now, watching his rapidly retreating back, her nerves still jangled and stinging from his taunt that she and the boys might be ‘up to something’, Hermione is reminded of the whirling winds that race through the courtyard, collecting and scattering debris like old grudges.

Dust devils, they are called. The boys would find that an appropriate term for him. Their animosity follows him, like imps hitching a ride on the snapping hem of his long black robe.

Hermione’s only thought is, _thank goodness. Now he won’t catch us._

* * *

Seven years and many different thoughts later, Hermione kneels at his tomb, and wishes she had watched him more. Not in the furtive, let’s-see-what-I-can-get-away-with-behind-his-back way that defined most of her life at Hogwarts, but in a truer, honest light. This clever wizard, this sorcerer of deception and subterfuge was ever more her kindred than either Harry or Ron. This dark brother, whom she never wanted to understand or appreciate until it was too late and he was gone.

Late at night, she lies awake and thinks of Severus Snape, seeing his black-clad back moving away from her.

Always moving away.


	33. Rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rainy Halloween Challenge 2014

Halloween remains a landmark to Severus. In spite of all that has happened, after all he has seen, all he has experienced and survived. As he marches through the late months of the year, Halloween imperiously holds up its hand in an emphatic “STOP” and halts his progress, makes him look back.

He no longer needs to venture to Godric’s Hollow. He doesn’t have to; it is here, haunting his very thoughts.

The Halloween weather is dark, ominous. The sky is a purple bruise; rain falls incessantly. The warmest fire cannot take the chill from his quarters or his bones.

* * *

The knock on the door is cursory, and it opens almost before the last knock’s echo fades. Hermione. She knows without saying that this is a hard night for him, but she doesn’t make him lance this grisly story. She understands that it is a scar he will carry forever, even though the wound has faded.

He doesn’t have to talk. She takes him into her arms, and together they watch the rain fall, washing away Halloween like a chalk drawing on the pavement. The chill in the air finally warms; the soft witch at his side always heals, always understands.


	34. Magickal Prometheus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frankenstein Monster Challenge, 2014
> 
> This drabble series is dedicated to anyone who has ever felt like a misfit. You are not monsters. Look into the mirror and see how beautiful you are.

He had always felt put together with spare parts: some lanky hair and a nose, big feet, long arms, sour heart. The latter had been cultivated in a garden choked with weeds, had grown stunted and misshapen.

For a long time he’d felt dormant, waiting to be brought to life. He met Lily; she was the divine spark, but not for him. In the end she too had fled from him, as did anyone who dared to approach that weedy garden of a heart.

So he stumbled round, wondering why he had been so poorly made, and for what purpose.

* * *

Time passed. He thought perhaps darkness was the answer – he could hide his mismatched soul away from the light, and if he could not be loved, at least he could be feared. It didn’t matter that he still wasn’t whole; he was in a place in which everyone was too frightened of him to remark upon it – to his face, at least.

But it didn’t change the scars, and it didn’t heal the patches where he had been lashed together and left to graft. He didn’t know how to grow, and the darkness only made him aware of his defects.

* * *

Heartache is boring. After the tears dry, and life moves on, heartache becomes another burden to carry, like a hunched back or a game leg. He lost Lily, he lost everything. Grief poured out of the clumsy stitches that held him together like a rag doll, and some days he thought he didn’t have enough stuffing left in him to keep him walking upright. Nobody cared, and he had never learned the art of allowing anyone to care about him.

Every day his heart shattered; during his sleep it grew back. He no longer had the will to tend it.

* * *

A broken doll, lying in a hospital bed. A neglected toy, covered in scars and bruises and shame. No one came to see if any divine spark was left in him. He wasn’t dead, but what proof did he have that he was alive?

Then one day she came. She never saw him as broken. The way she looked at him forced him to look at himself. At first he thought she was using a different mirror. He was beautiful. And she was, of course; it was a reflection of love.

His heart grew back, and was never broken again.


	35. Things That Go Bump In The Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noise Challenge 2014

Halloween, Godrick’s Hollow. How many times has he come here? How many times has he stared at the mawkish statue of the Potters, and wished the foolish dream that it was _his_ stone effigy instead of Potter’s, _his_ granite arms around the slim waist of his beloved Lily?

Severus drops to his knees, feeling so alone. Muggles race by, plastic buckets shaped like jack-o-lanterns banging against their legs, but they ignore him.

“Lily, I’m so scared,” he moans, as his tears fall.

A strange noise, like the sigh of a lost lover, drifts over him, chilling him to the bone.

* * *

The Shrieking Shack. His final debt is paid, and Potter and his friends race away. Severus feels his pain and heartache ebb, like the blood leaving his body. He tries to catch them, these final parts of him he can still feel, he can still call his own. But like his memories, they too are drifting away like smoke, leaving the shell he is and will soon never be again.

An unusual sound, like the galloping of a centaur, moves toward him, vibrating the floor. A skidding, falling form lands beside him, and mulishly, painfully, pulls him back toward life.

* * *

Halloween, Godrick’s Hollow. Severus stares at the stone figures. He no longer envies them; he pities them.

People make speeches, and use words like martyrs, heroes. He listens but doesn’t take it in. Hermione sits by his side, where she has been ever since the night she saved his life in the Shrieking Shack. Her hand is locked trustingly in his. Her soft sigh is as familiar and dear to him as that night long ago when he heard her, on his knees and alone on this very spot.

Her breath is his breath, the wonderful, strange sound of life.


	36. Hogwarts, A History

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> School Supplies Challenge 2014

Flourish and Blott’s teems with students. Rose and Hugo dash between the bookshelves, catching up with friends, making plans. Last minute shopping, Hermione thinks, used to be fun when she was a student, tearing around, reveling in the smell and feel of new textbooks, the anticipation of returning to Hogwarts.

Now it’s just exhausting.

She turns the corner and sees it: _Hogwarts: A History – 2012 Edition_.

She doesn’t want to look, but the pages open as if waiting for her, and he is there: Severus Snape, glaring at her with that mixture of disdain and vulnerability she knows so well.

* * *

Harry warned her this year they would add his story to the book, but she knows it will be a pathetic attempt, the anemic telling of an extraordinary man, made ordinary by mediocre writing and mawkish, second-hand accounts. Hermione feels angry, and sad. There is an ache in her chest that never really goes away, but burns and sputters whenever Snape’s name is mentioned, which is less and less now.

 _This is how they will remember him,_ she thinks. A strange figure in a black costume, tragic and doomed. “I’m so glad you’re not alive to see this,” she murmurs.


	37. The Lost Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not a GS100 drabble, actually, but I wanted to archive it here.

The stone is black marble, with only two words written upon it. No beginning and end dates, no fancy carvings, no words of praise or explanation.

She looks down at it solemnly, and thinks, _I should have been here first. You are not supposed to outlive your children._

She kneels, and brushes the snow from the marble. It is cool, and unyielding; words that have been used to describe her son. No one but her will ever remember the black-haired boy that felt so warm and sweet against her breast.

The red roses look like blood against Severus’ snow-capped monument.

* * *

He was soft, that boy, and she should have protected him with her magic, instead of hiding it away to please an unpleasable man. She should have gone cap in hand to her Prince relatives, instead of hiding away in prideful poverty. She should have encouraged her only son, she should have made him proud of himself, instead of turning him hard with her stubborn martyrdom.

 _Sweet he was_ , she thinks, and soft-hearted and loving, until she taught him that love was nothing but a landslide of false hopes and poverty.

She walks away, and weeps for her lost boy.


	38. Meanwhile, In A Diagon Alley Apothecary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> School Supplies Challenge, 2014

With a sigh, Severus picked up another overpriced ingredient and dropped it into the wicker basket. He looked around at the soon-to-be students and closed his eyes. War, carnage and near-death came and went, and they still looked the same: gormless, irresponsible and dangerous. _This is what we fought the war for,_ he thought glumly. _This is what I faced a bloody snake for, to not-quite die and return to my old job._

He looked around the shop, in this newly refurbished side of Diagon Alley, and slunk toward the counter. Those who recognised him gave him a wide berth.

* * *

The bell over the door rang, and the murmur of voices rose. _Another ‘hero’, then_ , he thought. Longbottom had just left, with a string of witches trailing behind him like bows on the tail of a kite. Severus snorted to himself. _Everyone’s a hero._

Except me.

“Professor Snape!”

He knew that voice well. He considered ignoring her, but he knew the tenacious little witch would badger him until he─why did she sound so happy to see him?

He turned. “Yes, Miss Granger─”

Time, he thought later, is a trickster. It tells you what you _think_ you remember, not what _is._

* * *

“Neville told me you were here. Getting your supplies too, I see!” Hermione blushed. “It will be good to have you for Potions again.” Glancing about, she added with a wink, “Between you and me, Slughorn wasn’t a patch on you.”

“I see.” No, he didn’t. He was too busy thinking, _When did you become a woman? And a damned gorgeous one?_

“I won’t keep you. I just wanted to welcome you back.” She touched his sleeve. “It wouldn’t be the same without you at Hogwarts.” With a wave, she moved on.

Suddenly the coming year didn’t seem so dreadful.


	39. Spelled To Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No Dialogue Challenge 2011, again, not a GS100 Challenge, but one written at the same time
> 
> Songs inspire me; I often quote from them in my stories, and this one sends shivers down my spine, and reminds me of Severus/Minerva. I love fun, playful MM/SS smut and enjoy this ship almost as much as my own Flagship, but I find my stories tend on the more sombre side with them. I always feel the twin heartache of friendship, loss and comradeship that I always felt between these two characters.

_You’ll walk unscathed through musket fire, no ploughman’s blade will cut thee down, no cutless wound will mark thy face, and you will be my ain true love.  
And as you walk through death’s dark veil, the cannon’s thunder can’t prevail, and those who hunt thee down will fail, and you will be my ain true love.  
The field is cut and bleeds to red. The cannon balls fly round my head, the infirmary man may count me dead, when I’ve gone to find my ain true love._

* * *

“Severus, wake up!”

“It’s no use, Minvera.”

“Bullshit! More phoenix tears.”

“Minerva…”

“No! I can’t. I can’t stop trying. Please, for the love of Merlin, Severus, open your eyes!”

“He’s gone – “

“Shut up! Either help me or fuck off, Filius!”

“Here, pour these on the wound.”

“Ah, gods, there’s so much blood! Push my hair away.”

“What if he doesn’t want to come back, Minerva?”

“Don’t be stupid! He has come back! He has to…”

“Minerva, please…give the poor boy some dignity.”

“Damn dignity! Give me that bezoar, while you’re at it.”

“He’s gone, Minerva. Please, let him rest.”

“I placed charms! Protection, defense – I protected him!”

“Look at his wand, Minerva. He’s cancelled them. He knew this would happen. Stop doing that!”

“I don’t accept this. I can’t…”

“Minerva. Look at him, my dear. Look how peaceful. He’s not going to come back, Min. Please stop crying. He wouldn’t want you to.”

Oh, Severus, please wake up…”

“Let him go, Min. Let me take him back to the Infirmary.”

“Please, just one more…”

“No. Enough.”

“Severus, no….”

“Let him rest.”

“I can’t let him go yet. I didn’t tell him things – “

“He knows, Minerva. He always knew.”


	40. The Severus Rose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Black Rose Challenge, 2014
> 
> I have always loved the oddballs of nature – blue food, purple potatoes, yellow watermelons. Not beta’d and not my property. He hated roses. Hated their insipid ‘old dears’ smell, their traitorous thorns amid vibrant blooms, hated the way girls exclaimed over them and poncy gardeners nursed them. You could do nothing viable or interesting whatever with them as a potions ingredient (unless you counted that foully-scented rose water that Sybill Trelawney would douse herself in every Christmas, eyeing him hopefully from beneath the mistletoe.

And never get him _started_ about the uselessness of mistletoe.

The only pleasure he took at that infernal Yule Ball was blasting poor Pomona’s rose bushes and flushing out students from behind them like guilty quail.

* * *

Severus Snape reminded Hermione of a rose. Intense, thorny, tightly-furled, wildly flushed with enthusiasm or anger. He cultivated himself as carefully as any bloom Pomona had ever raised.

In turn, Severus watched Hermione grow, blossom into womanhood, grow soft and fragrant. Studying her from afar, he took satisfaction in her sun-ripened youth and vivacity, her skin as petal-soft as any of Sprout’s most blowsy overgrown crimson beauties. For the first time in his life, he found himself studying the roses Hermione brought into her study, his fingers stroking the petals, wondering if her downy breast could possibly be as soft.

* * *

Of course Pomona helped her. That randy old badger never missed an opportunity to try her green fingers at matchmaking. But Hermione created them for him.

“It’s called ‘the Severus Rose’,” Hermione said, placing a vaseful at his table. She patted his hand affectionately. “They are officially registered.”

His eyes strayed to them throughout lunch; he was mesmerised by the glistening, silvery nap that gave them a ghostly sheen. His eyes followed the dainty beads of water perched over the curling midnight-black petals.

“Why roses?” he asked, unable to tear his eyes away. “Surely you know I detest roses, Hermione.”

* * *

She smiled. “Because this rose is the living embodiment of you, Severus. Beautiful and unusual, and prickly and silky.”

They were, he confessed, everything he had ever hoped to be. Hermione introduced them sense by sense; the spicy scent of peat and bees, the soft rustling of leaves stroking his collarbone, the velvety-smooth petal, as smooth as her cheek, caressing his lips, a taste of smoke and dark chocolate on his tongue, the fathomless black of the flower itself. “My rose,” Hermione whispered as she held him.

He grew to love his roses. In time, he grew to love himself.


	41. Hidden Agenda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someday My Prince Will Come 2014

It was a frightening expedition, this journey to his bed. It was not so much his body she wanted. That was easy; all she had to do was ask, and undress.

She wanted his lust, dark and greasy, like his hair. She wanted to slather it over her body, lubricate her flesh. She wanted his control, hot, burning, unquenchable as Fiendfyre, to melt against her.

She wanted his mind, complex and deceptive, yearning and needful. And above all, Hermione wanted to breach the iron throne of fear and pride and rejection, the most tender, softest part of him: Severus’ heart.


	42. The Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seven Books Anniversary Challenge 2014
> 
> Okay, this is a bit of a shoe-horn job, but it sorta works. In any case, I hope it pleases. Just a fluffy drabble series. Perhaps I’ll take the same concept and turn it into an angst-a-rama drabble series.

* * *

**Stone**

She had arrived at Hogwarts exactly seven years to the day she last saw it. In spite of the passage of time, and her own personal mileage, Hermione still felt the same thrill as when she first laid eyes on the venerable old castle.

But that had been a long time ago, and she had changed. Looking up at the ramparts, she also felt the visceral fear of the last time she had been there, with the air full of screams and the scent of death and destruction.

How could one place raise so many diametrically opposing emotions at once?

* * *

**Secret**

Familiarity soothed her; she received warm embraces from old teachers and friends like Neville, another new teacher, and everyone seemed glad to have her on board as the new Arithmancy Professor.

Everyone except Professor Snape.

They were now colleagues, of a sort, but he regarded her with the same sneering disdain that he’d once saved for Neville, or worse. Hermione didn’t understand it, and she was too afraid to ask. The very fact that he was still alive stunned her.

How had he survived? No one knew, and she wasn’t about to ask anyone, least of all her former professor.

* * *

**Prisoner**

Hermione gradually slotted in to the summer life of a teacher at Hogwarts. Snape also stayed on the grounds; he kept to himself for the most part, except at mealtime, but at night Hermione heard his footsteps ringing down the long corridors.

She bumped into him on the way to the kitchens one night. He seemed unsurprised to see her.

“Why, Professor,” she said with a smile, “anyone might think you’re… up to something.”

He looked at her in baffled confusion. Her words had meant nothing to him. He didn’t remember their significance.

She couldn’t understand why that bothered her.

* * *

**Fire**

The Autumn term started; life became a string of classes, meals, patrols and tedium. She saw Severus often; gradually he became Severus to her, though he always addressed her formally. He was rather quiet when not in class; most afternoons in the Staff Room she found him reading the _Prophet_ by the fire.

Hermione always joined him on the battered sofa, warming her perpetually cold feet. On Halloween, she gave him a wide berth, remembering the awful, sad story.

To her astonishment, when she entered the Staff Room that afternoon and sat beside him, he kindled the blaze with a silent spell.

* * *

**Phoenix**

By Christmas, Hermione and Severus were both on a first name basis, and she was infatuated. There was no other word for it; she thought about Severus constantly. She actually avoided him, because she didn’t trust herself not to make a fool of herself with him.

She knew his history, and she didn’t think he saw her as even comparing to the love he’d lost. He kept himself to himself, and rebuffed the brazen witches in the Broomsticks who propositioned him. He studied her avoidance with growing puzzlement.

“I’m not the same man you knew before,” he said, one evening.

* * *

**Prince**

They were on patrol, and Hermione stopped in her tracks, her heart beating fast. “What do you mean─”

Suddenly he was pressing her against the wall, blazing over her, filling her vision. “I’m not a coward. And I did remember the significance of your words.” He stroked her face; his palm was warm and surprisingly gentle. “I’m not pining over a lost love. I’m a wizard who can’t get you out of his head.”

She actually stumbled forward as he stepped back. “If I’m wrong, I apologise. But I have to know. Am I deluding myself, or is this real?”

* * *

**Hallows**

Perhaps she pulled, or he pushed. Either way, they were fused together. Their first kiss was clumsy and awkward and sloppy and it felt marvelous. They eventually found their level, melting into one another. He was strong and solid, not the brittle man she had known, and his desire was evident.

A sound snapped them out of their passion-fueled embrace, and he quickly Dissilutioned them both.

They calmed as the sound faded. “Look at me,” she whispered, stroking his fading erection. “And I’ll show you just how real it is.”

He smiled down at her, and held out his arm.


	43. The Aftermath

I held him in my arms as he wept like a motherless child… “Oh, Gods, I wish I was dead!” he choked, grief twisting his heart, until I could feel it falter, and beat wildly, as if to catch up with his blinding, rending emotions.

“Shh, love,” I pleaded uselessly, my tears running unchecked. His desolation was a live animal that tore at his skin, left the slick, sour taste of reckoning in his mouth, gripping him like a palsy that threatened to rip his very soul into so many pieces they would never be found again.

I tried to comfort him, even as I realised that this was a man’s grief, a deep, abiding, inconsolable grief, and a mere mortal woman could never assuage it. Especially this man’s grief, and especially someone as unimportant in his life as me.

 _She could have comforted him,_ I thought, bitterly. _If she had loved him as much as I do, she would have been able to comfort him._

Unable to stop myself, I tried to placate him. “Please, Severus, he made you do this – “

Strong hand gripped me like a vice, clinging to me for support, punishing me for my sympathy. “I didn’t have to obey him! I looked him in the eye and he pleaded for his death, and I gave it to him!

“He made me! He made me say the words that killed him; that have destroyed me!” His grief turned to howling rage and his eyes became mad with terror. “You can’t kill a man with words. You have to kill him with your anger, your rage, your hatred – “

He howled to the heavens, “I hated you, old man! Do you hear me! I hated you for making me do this!”

I put my hands over his mouth and pulled his rapidly failing body to mine. “No you didn’t hate him!”

“I did! I did!” He raged, clinging to me. “I hated him!”

His fury was a terrible, childish, mindless thing to behold. “I hated him!”

He slumped suddenly in my arms, and whimpered, his rage spent and useless. “I loved him.”


	44. First Footer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Minerva/Severus drabble series based on some New Year Challenge or another.

Every year on Hogmanay, she reddings her cottage the Muggle way. No magic, no spells. She scrubs the already tidy floor, and cleans every surface until it shines like a new penny. The hearth is brushed, and if she throws a smattering of fragrant herbs onto the logs, who is there to say her nay?

She sets out the whiskey and the coal and the black bun, She dons her favourite robe. A glance at the clock shows that midnight approaches and it would not do to not be ready for him.

She smiles in anticipation; it is almost time.

She remembers so well explaining to him the desirability of being her first-footer. He was still a callow youth, and brittle; his skin rode uncomfortably on his insecurities. “Why would you want me to come?” he said, in the half-growl, half-grumble she grew to treasure so dearly.

“It’s tradition, Severus. If a tall, dark, handsome man is the first to set foot through your door on Hogmanay, you’ll have good luck.”

He scoffed, of course. He thought all such traditions foolish. He could not fathom anyone thinking him handsome, much less wanting his company. Wanting him first, above anyone else?

He did not come the first or second year of her invitation. The third year he arrived unexpectedly in the middle of a terrible snowstorm, fighting the biting wind. He was a stark black creature, silhouetted in her doorway against a backdrop of blinding white. She marveled that he was able to find her cottage at all in the storm.

He stepped through the door slowly, reluctantly, almost ceremoniously. At her obvious surprise, he snarled, “What? Aren’t I supposed to herald good fortune, being the first through your door? What happens in honour of my arrival, now that I’m here?”

Typical of him, she thinks now, years later. Typical Slytherin. What’s in it for me? She recovered and invited him in, noting the cheap bottle of firewhiskey he brought with him. Albus was still paying him a pittance; it was all he could afford, and she was careful not to make mention of it. He hated to be patronised.

Years later, they could share a rueful laugh at that first toast, the first sip of the caustic gutrot that left them both spluttering and teary-eyed. He pounded her on the back, and she fetched them both a glass of water.

The clock chimes midnight; and the door opens, and he steps through. He is the same as always; windswept and cold-chapped, his lips red and cheeks rosy, and his unreadable eyes sweep over the cottage.

“Well?” He asks, his voice treacle-dark from age and cracked from lack of use. “Will it be a lucky year for you, Min?”

Minerva McGonagall nods at the closed door, the vacant welcome mat, but she can still see him. She lifts her tot of whiskey toward the door, and tears slide from her eyes.

“Guid New Year to you, Severus,” she says, and smiles.


	45. No HEA For Us

He watched her dress, trying to find the words to ease his breaking heart. “I-I’ll write –“

“No letters,” she said, with a brave, false smile. “Do you think I need letters after this?”

“Hermione – “

“Don’t talk as if we’ll never see one another again!” she wept.

He swiftly took her in her arms, and held her as she cried, “I want to believe there is an ‘after’.”

“There will be, Hermione,” he soothed, his voice breaking. “You’ll have your happily ever after.”

She looked at him with streaming eyes. “But will you?” She held his close. “Will we?”


	46. Laugh If You Must

“Oh, there’s still a familiar face or two. In fact, there’s one in particular whom I’m sure you’ll be happy to see.” Minerva added slyly, “Hermione Granger is Professor of Muggle studies. I’m sure you’ll have loads to talk about.”

“And that’s supposed to be incentive to get me to come back?” He drawled, rolling his eyes. “I’m surprised the students haven’t lynched her by now. Insufferable girl.”

Minerva shook her head and tutted. “Pot, kettle, black, Severus. Besides, girls grow up. It’s about time you did, as well.”

Severus gave Minerva a withering look. “You’re pushing your luck, Headmistress.”

Severus had accepted Minerva’s offer of dinner that evening, and as they entered the Great Hall he passed Hermione speaking with a group of older students, all of whom, witch and wizard alike, appeared to adore her.

But something was amiss; beneath her happy, smiling exterior was a restlessness, a brittle self-deprecation Severus felt immediately. It was like sensing a lighter version of himself as a teacher here, and it rubbed against him with the familiar feeling of a scratchy garment. Not unwelcome, just unnecessary.

As he walked unnoticed behind her, he overheard the most asinine, idiotic remark ever uttered.

“I mean, no disrespect to Muggleborns, but my father says that most of the truly great Magical heroes down through history were wizards of Pureblood.” Amidst the jeering naysayers, the Slytherin stood firm. “No, he says it’s proven fact! They have better reflexes and conjuring abilities, too.”

Hermione had rolled her eyes with the rest and declared, “Now this, Mister Alyn, is the point at which I throw back my head, and laugh like a Musketeer.” She placed her fists on her hips like the best Pantomime Prince Charming, threw her head back, laughing loudly and derisorily, “Ha ha ha!”

Everyone around her had laughed with her, except a younger boy who sported the red hair and freckles of a Weasley. He growled, “Pack it up, mate. Harry Potter’s one of my dad’s friends, and he’s half-blood.” Several students nodded, murmuring.

Severus, without thought, said, “I, too, would beg to differ with you, young man.”

“Blimey, that’s Severus Snape!” A voice whispered, and suddenly the room was filled with the excited whispers of students, as word spread from table to table. Necks craned to get a better view of him as Hermione looked up with a smile of surprised welcome.

Severus looked at the boy who had uttered the contemptuous remark and continued, “Mister… Alyn, is it? You, Mr. Alyn, are speaking with one of the heroes of the war.” Severus nodded to Hermione, who nodded modestly in return. “Professor Granger is Muggleborn. And it may or may not have escaped your attention, but Professor Granger is also a witch.”

He drawled, “In other words, a woman.”

The others laughed. Hermione had blushed so prettily that Severus felt colour rising in his own face. Mr. Alyn, proving that he was not adverse to a joke at his expense, also laughed.

Looking into Severus’ eyes, Hermione silently asked permission, and when Severus nodded consent, she said, “Class, this is none other than Professor Severus Snape. He is also half-blood. I had the honour of being one of his students during the war years. If you want to know what a true hero looks like, you need only look as far as this wizard,” she’d said, with typical Gryffindor sincerity and conviction.

She’d also done something else, and Severus had never forgotten it. She’d looked at him with eyes that were filled with affection and pleasure. She’d been happy to see him.

Severus had been so taken aback that he’d nodded formally and replied, “Professor Granger. Thank you for your kind words. May I say that teaching such a talented witch was my privilege,” he added, airily. “I only hope none of your students are caught reenacting some of your more dangerously heroic deeds.” Hermione’s eyes widened.

The impertinent oik who’d started the fracas interjected, “Professor Granger, is this the point at which I throw back my head and laugh like a Musketeer?”

Snape smirked. “I wouldn’t recommend it, Mr. Alyn. Professor Granger’s reflexes and conjuring abilities are quite formidable. Heroic, even.”

Severus swept the room with his gaze, and escorted a still blushing Hermione up to the Head table. They left the student body gawking in their wake, and to Severus, it had felt a little like old times. It was also the first time Hogwarts felt like home.

Minerva seated them far apart at the table that day. Severus knew she had done it on purpose; whetting his appetite, giving him a taste of what seeing Hermione every day might be like.

Hermione touched his shoulder as they parted company to sit. It was the last time they sat apart.


	47. Potente

He watches, checking for any change in temperature, colour, consistency, flavour. He has patiently stirred, adding each ingredient in the right measurement, at the right time in the right order. Shimmering, simmering, rising to the boil.

Each twist of the wrist, each turn of the rod, is timed from years of practice; the brew is more powerful now than when he was a nervous, callow man, attempting this recipe for the first time.

She is heady as Amortentia, invigorating as Pepper-up and as perfect as Felix Felicis. Now he feels her, ready for him, potent; a tonic to be consumed.


	48. No Holy Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas Challenge

Christmas carols had never sounded more melancholy. Severus listened to the carolers as Filius put them through their resentful, sullen paces for a school that knew neither peace on earth nor goodwill toward men. Toward him, especially.

He sat, still as stone, listening to songs of hope and rebirth, and all he could think was, let it be over soon. Please.

On Boxing Day, he delivered what he assumed would be his parting gift to Lily’s son. Discharging his last duty gave him no peace or comfort.

Six months later, alone in a dusty Shack, his soul felt its worth.


	49. No Nightmare This Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Halloween Challenge

She woke in the early hours, her body instinctively reaching for his heat, even though she knew he was gone. She cursed inwardly. <i>Too much wine. I promised I’d stay awake, but too much wine.</i>

She glanced at his bedside table and relaxed a bit. His wand was still sitting there, beside his reading glasses. He would be a bit easier to control without a wand. Marginally.

Nevertheless, she took her own wand in hand, and threw on a dressing gown. After a moment’s pause, she draped his over her arm, and went off in search of her sleeping husband.

The harvest moon shone orange in the sky, like a bloated, enchanted angel, and her restless eyes scanned the horizon. It was cold; the wind made the leaves shiver, and her with them. Fear cramped her heart; she raced around the house, her soft calls carried away in the whispering wind.

She spied him, near the old yew tree, and nearly crumpled with relief. He was on his knees, rocking, whimpering softly, and her heart stuttered in her chest at the sight of the silvery tears streaming down his gaunt cheeks.

She approached him like a maid approaches a unicorn.

“Severus?” she called gently. He whirled toward her, clutching his hands to his chest like two wounded birds.

“Don’t look,” he sobbed. “I don’t want you to see it.”

She draped his dressing gown over his shoulders and knelt beside him. In the voice a mother uses with her child, she said, “What don’t you want me to see, my darling? I promise it will be alright.”

Tears and snot smeared across his face. Reluctantly, he allowed her to take his hands in hers. Inch by inch, he relinquished them. Finally they unfurled, large and white and without any blemish.

“It won’t come off,” he mourned plaintively, rubbing them together. “I’ve scrubbed and _Scourgified_. It won’t come off.”

“Let’s go inside,” Hermione entreated, with a soft smile. “I can make it go away.”

He looked at her with the trusting, hopeful misery of a child. “Blood never goes away.”

“Yes, it will,” she said firmly, pulling him to his feet. He held onto her as they made their way back to the house. He was chilled to the bone, and shivered as he lay in her arms.

“I killed her,” he wept. “I killed my Lily.”

Hermione wept with him.

He woke in the early hours, and Severus instinctively reached for his wife. They made passionate love. Afterward, she lay with her head against his chest, listening to his steady, constant heart. There was nothing of the pitiful man scrubbing away at the bloodstains that would never come out.

“Happy All-Saints,” he purred. She smiled, happy to be done with Halloween for another year. She hated it as much as she hated Lily Evans and the blood-stained death that ate away a little more of Severus’ heart every year; she hated her inability to prevent it from happening every year.

Lying in his arms, Hermione felt weak with exhaustion.

“I must admit the benefits of a night of uninterrupted sleep are quite remarkable. I feel like a new man,” he rumbled, toying with her hair.

She froze. “No nightmares, then?”

“None at all.” He kissed her with abject tenderness, giving her one of his rare smiles. “Marrying you has allowed me to finally let her go. I don’t have to feel guilty anymore. You have set me free, Hermione. And I am eternally grateful.

He sighed contentedly.”Hungry, my love? I’ll have the house-elves bring us a Full English, shall I?”


	50. She Makes Me

Strange, he thought, to look into the mirror year after year and think the same thing. _Misfit_. The thought never matured even as his thin, childish body morphed into the pubescent, oily, dreary shell that sprouted hair and hard-ons in the most inopportune places. _Misfit_. The word trailed after him like a bad smell throughout his years at Hogwarts, giving birth to nicknames like _Snivellus_ , _freak_ and _ghoul_. There was the ever-present feeling that life was probably never going to give him a break.

He matured, grew taller, broader, angrier, sadder, yet he didn’t change. He was still a misfit.

The night he finally changed was the last night of his life. Lying in a pool of his own blood and filth, thinking he could finally shed the old skin of misadventure and strangeness, he was just an ordinary man, walking through the veil. There, he’d re-invent himself as the man he had always wanted to be.

But fate isn’t pretty; destiny isn’t convenient. Neither was she. With her powerful magic and gritty, snub-nosed determination, she wouldn’t let him go. While he lay in a pool of his own blood and filth, she gave him no choice but to live.

At first, he wandered like a lost soul, a ghost, trying to find the key; how to step back into his old clothes and don the mantle of _misfit_ once again. He’d been _this close_ to changing, and it angered him to be denied the perfect chance to unmake his bed, to start over from scratch and begin anew as a normal man, owing no more to the future than the cost of his funeral.

So she weathered his stormy rage, puzzled that he didn’t want to live. How could he explain that she’d robbed him of a new death?

It started with nothing special; a quiet woman sitting by his bed. When he wept, she held his hand. When he ranted, she listened. When he was strong enough to walk, his gait less steady than his first baby steps, she cried tears of pride. She did not absolve him of his sins. He learned absolve himself. She stole his impatience and his anger and made them her own to use as a shield to protect him from harm.

When he was misunderstood, she set the record straight, until he was able to care enough to do it for himself.

He learned to be unselfish enough to give her back her life, then realised he wanted to live – but not without her. To become worthy of her, he accepted his second chance at life. He stopped feeling sorry for himself and became a man, a husband, a father. He stopped fearing love.

He grew up, and left his misfit world behind, and somehow tempered his grasping, greedy clinging hands into an embrace. He had died for honour. He would live for love, and her, which amounted to the same thing. She had a way of making everything seem right.


	51. The Sun and The Moon

He lay in the soft, warm bed that was her arms, her downy breast his pillow. If he opened one lazy eye, he would be able to see the peak of her nipple outlined in the rosy glow of the fire beyond, but he was too sated, too happy. If he opened his eyes to find this was all a perfect dream, he was afraid it would burst his already melting heart.

He has harvested her orgasm like the sun nourishing the fruit beyond containment of its bounty, her release bursting from her ripe and lush and sweet.

And hers is the irresistible silvery draw of the moon, pulling his in with the mysterious power she wields over him.


	52. Little Prince

His school robes looked out of place; at least two styles back from the latest fashion, and so old they had faded to a dark grey. So short, three inches of pale, thin leg stuck out from beneath.

A Prince born to a pauper, a little gentle-man deserving more than he was born to; raised in a poverty delivered with neglect, fists, drunken curses, and chilling anger that glared from bloodshot eyes that had once looked like his. Things that twist and bend a soft, malleable child to the breaking point.

He would show them all, this Prince of Pride.


	53. The Magic Kiss

There is magic within the walls of the heart. It doesn’t break when it can bend; it doesn’t falter when it can beat.

There is magic beating within the walls of the heart.

When he walked into the final hour of his life, he spoke goodbye with every step he took. He did not walk for Lily, he did not walk for Dumbledore, he did not walk for the thousands who had relied on him to play his part and beat the devil.

He walked for her. He walked for the one who never doubted, but always believed in him.

The heart bleeds, but keeps on beating.

In a room in a grim old place in London, he stumbled one night, weary, sick and hurting, biting back tears of rage and humiliation. A single candle glowed upon a mantle, and he snuffed it out as he fell against it. He wished with all his heart he could die and be done with it. Just close his eyes and never wake up.

Would he be in heaven, or hell? He had looked the devil in the eye and saw no difference to the face staring back at him in the mirror.

The fumblings in the dark awakened the girl in the corner, and she gently called his name, her tone full of fear and respect. He sank to his knees and cursed the gods who had invented Unforgivables. He shuddered and cried aloud, wishing he were dead.

She held him as lay helpless, and gave him comfort, pity and succor. He gave her a detention.

He also gave her a small piece of his heart; the one that was left after Lily had chewed away all the best parts of it and left the blackened leavings to beat on without her.

In the dark, his face covered in tears, he heard the sweet song of comfort. His heart sang the descant. It was discordant, out of tune and rusty from little use, but it sang its twelve-tone melody.

She touched his arm as he walked past her, the last night he was a real man at Hogwarts. Before he ran up onto the Tower of Babel and struck the master mute, her eyes kissed him as he passed.

He hated her for that kiss. He hated that he could not feel it; that he would never feel her magic touch him.

On the night he died, he saw her weep, and try to save his life. She wasn’t strong enough. She wasn’t wily enough. She wasn’t dark enough to dig through the shards of his heart to the place where duty and obligation and convention demanded he hide his true heart.

Her tears and comfort were in vain, and he tried to tell her to beat her heart to the tune of someone more worthy than he, but in the end, he wanted her too much. In the end, her heart beat its first, last and truest magic just for him.


	54. The Wager

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little Minerva/Severus banter

He sees her talking to the newest, rawest batch of Gryffindors he’s ever seen. A little girl with wild, bushy hair; she’ll be trouble. That kind of hair always is. And that newest Weasley scrote. Face like a yam, nose almost as big as his. He’s one of Molly’s litter to be sure. And rounding out the trio is Potter. He doesn’t like to contemplate the thousand places that smarmy little oik’s face wants to take him.

Towering over them is the lioness herself, proudly smiling down at her cubs as if she’s produced them herself, the self-satisfied Scottish harridan.

He’ll punish her tonight for this little tableau of familial love; he hates to feel left out.

She preens as he walks by and falls easily into step with him. He can never make her trot to keep up, no matter how fast he walks.

“I’ve got news that will wipe that smug look off your face, Severus Snape,” she boasts.

“Do tell.” He could not sound more disinterested.

“I have a new seeker.”

“One player does not a Quidditch team make. Who is it?”

“Guess.”

He sighs. “Barkely?”

“No.”

“Jonas?”

“Merlin, no!”

“Whorrel.”

“Cold as a very cold thing.”

He sighs, weary of the game. “Who then?”

“Harry Potter.”

He skids to a halt, staring at her in shock.

“That first year?”

“How many other Harry Potters do you know, Severus? Of course.”

“He’s too young.”

“He’s good. Better than his father. Better than _you.”_

“Hphm.”

“Grunt all you like. But he’s going to wipe the floor with your Slytherins.” Her smug expression makes him want to thrash her. It should; he taught it to her. She’s going to pay dearly for it tonight.

“Would you like to make a little wager on this, Professor McGonagall?” He purrs, smiling.


	55. What The Squid Did

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Years ago several of my LJ friend were lamenting the fact that we couldn't attend one of the Cons. So we made our own little online Con, and exchanged stories and gifts and had almost as much fun as the people who actually got to go to Con. This is one of those gifts.

_There he goes again_ , she thought, watching her husband walking down toward the shore of the Black Lake. _I’ve got you this time, Severus Snape_.

Hermione had never been the jealous type, but it started to bother her that her husband was being so secretive as of late. The fact that he always seemed to leave at the same time and return slightly damp made her not only curious, but feeling distinctly left out.

They did everything together. And now, he was traipsing off again, toward the Black Lake at this ungodly hour for the fourth night in a row.

Severus was a master of subterfuge and misdirection. Hermione knew if she confronted him directly, he would either distract her or avoid answering her, so she didn’t bother to try to ask him outright. So, night after night, she felt the bed shift, and she watched from their window as Hogwarts’ Headmaster walked gracefully down to the water’s edge, and returned some hours later, damp and quiet, and climbed back into bed as if nothing was amiss.

Well, no more. Tonight, she was going to find out what Severus was doing. She couldn’t take not knowing where her husband was.

The night was unseasonably warm, and Hermione waited until Severus rose from their bed, quietly donned a dressing gown and slipped out of their room, before grabbing her own gown and heading after him. She had worked herself up into quite a lather while lying in the dark, beside her husband of five years – five years! The thought of him sneaking out behind her back was the worst sort of betrayal. They had always shared everything – it was the cornerstone of their marriage, as Severus said. No secrets.

If this wasn’t a secret, she didn’t know what the hell was.

She heard Severus’ laughter before she saw him, and a dozen scenarios flashed through her mind. None of them were palatable. Even now, laughter did not come easily to her husband, and hearing his deep, glorious voice raised in uninhibited laughter simultaneously thrilled and terrified Hermione. Who could possibly give him so much pleasure as to make him laugh so openly?

Flying around the tree, Hermione ran to the water’s edge, wand raised, ready to hex the hell out of the trollop making her husband laugh so. She was also more than prepared to hex _his_ bollocks off as well.

“What the hell is going on here?” she cried, a hex on her lips. Her words died in her throat.

Severus was hip-dip in the dark water, naked as the day he was born, laughing. With the giant squid. He was tickling the huge tentacles, running his long slender fingers over the slippery flesh.

Severus looked up at his wife, merriment making his dark eyes flash enticingly. If he was surprised to see her, he certainly didn’t show it. “Hello dear. I was wondering when your insatiable curiosity would get the better of you and force you to follow me.”

She came closer and looked down into the water. To her great surprise, the Giant Squid’s long tentacles were wrapped around her husband’s body in a gentle grip. Severus was sporting an impressive erection, in spite of the cold water.

“Wha-?” Hermione shook her head. “Sorry, but what is going on, Severus?”

Her husband looked up at her and gave her a look she could read at fifty paces. “Come in and see.”

Uh oh. She knew _that_ voice. That voice meant the Headmaster was… _up_ to something. Usually her. Still confused, Hermione stepped forward and reached for his outstretched hand.

He gave her a look of pure fire, and she swallowed. A slow grin slid across his face, and he gestured to a log, where his dressing gown lay. “You don’t need clothes, pet. Be a good girl and come here.”

Damn him. That did it. Hermione slowly removed her gown, and basked in the glow of his appreciative gaze as she walked tentatively to the water’s edge. He held out his hand to steady her as she dipped a reluctant toe in the water. To her shock, it was pleasantly warm, almost bath water temperature. She looked at him.

Severus smiled again, then laughed as the Squid’s tentacles tickled him again. He drew Hermione into his arms and placed a gentle, soft kiss on her lips. “I’ve been working on a little surprise for you, pet. I prepared it a few days’ ago, but I wanted to wait until your Gryffindor nosiness overcame common sense.”

To Hermione’s stunned surprise, the Giant Squid slid a large tentacle around her waist. She squeaked in alarm.

Severus soothed, “It’s alright. Nothing to be afraid of. We’ve worked this out, Jules and I.”

“Jules?” she squeaked, as another soft arm slid around her.

“That’s his name?” her voice was slightly breathless, as her husband’s kisses slid along her jawline.

“Mm hmm. But that’s not really important now,” he smiled down at her. He ran another long finger along the beast’s tentacles. “This is, pet.”

Hermione’s question was swallowed in her husband’s delicious, passionate kiss. As she reveled in his luscious attention, she was suddenly aware of a soft, wet _something_ sliding between her thighs. Before she could react, this bloody _tentacle_ was teasing, rather adeptly, her clitoris.

“Holy fuck,” she whimpered, as Severus lowered his head to her painfully hard nipples. “How – “

“Legilimency, pet,” Severus purred smugly, as Hermione gasped. The sensations of this velvety surface insistently stroking in _just the right place_ was swiftly robbing her of coherent thought and the ability to speak. “I merely told Jules about a little fantasy I used to entertain when I was a student here, and he agreed to help me make it come true.”

“You used to fantasise about bringing a girl out here and having a ménage a trois with Jules the Squid?”

To her surprise, he laughed again, a delicious sound that made Hermione quiver almost as much as Jules’ technique.

“No, love. I fantasized about one day bringing my _wife_ out here to do _this_.” Strong arms grasped her around the waist and pressed her backward, against Jules’ body. Hermione could see Severus’ erection, bobbing in the water, and she moaned as Jules shifted to allow her husband to enter her. The twin pleasures of Severus’ cock and Jules was –

“Oh shit,” she moaned, as Severus thrust into her, hard, needy. “I think I’m going to come!”

Severus growled, surrounded by his wife’s heat, drugged with power. “That’s a given, pet. Ah, that’s good! Just relax. We’ve just started.”

Floating in the warm water, Hermione felt another tentacle slide underneath, between the cleft of her bottom, and into –

“Oh. My. God. You are DP-ing me with a Squid, Severus Snape!” Hermione screamed. It would have sounded degenerate in any situation, but between the exquisite pleasure of her husband’s talents and the slender tentacle entering her with perfect gentleness, Hermione found rather quickly that she didn’t give a shit. She was pretty sure she was going to come her brains out.

“Merlin,” she whimpered, going completely limp. This was breaking every taboo in nature, and she was reveling in it.

Suddenly, Severus’ eyes opened wide and he shouted, “That’s not part of the deal, Jules! You aren’t supposed – supposed to – oh, oh, fuuuuck me…” he moaned, and his eyes rolled back in his head. Hermione opened her eyes and saw Severus, his head flung back, eyes closed, completely undone in erotic abandon.

He drove into her harder, faster, begging her. “Oh, Hermione! Come with me, witch…” His moans, sinful and ragged, told her he was coming hard and taking her with him. It took four good deep strokes and she was wailing like a banshee, his throaty cries answering hers.

Panting, the two lovers slowly came back to themselves, as Jules’ sinuous arms slid gently from their bodies. He supported them while they recovered, and when Severus lifted his flushed, sated wife into his arms, the Giant Squid slid quietly away, unnoticed.

When Hermione’s brains re-engaged and she regained the power of speech, she gave Severus a wicked grin. “Am I the most depraved woman in the world to ask if we might have an encore of that sometime? Very soon?”

That delicious laugh again! “Anything for my degenerate little witch,” Severus murmured, burying his nose in her damp hair.


	56. The Devil Outside Your Door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a bit of fun for a now-defunct fandom friendship.

She knows he is there. She can sense him, like an itch that begins under the skin and rises until it must be scratched before madness ensues. It is that numb feeling she gets when she looks up and sees him, glaring at her with such heat, her blood turns to dust in her veins and her spit dries to ash in her mouth.

He is outside her door. She knew he would come. He told her he would, if she did not come to him. How could she? How could she crawl to him, knowing the obscene triumph he would not bother to mask as she stood before him? How could she, knowing that to walk into his presence means to walk away from pride, from virtue, from herself?

So there he is. She can picture him in her mind. He is like a devil, with snarling jaws and ragged talons, tearing away every ounce of resolve she has to maintain her distance. She can see him in her mind’s eye: boring a hole with his iron will into the oaken door that stands between them – a six-inch thick barrier as insubstantial as paper. If he really wants to come in.

No door denies him.

She leans against it, trying to pool her might into strengthening this flimsy door. She pictures him, one hand pressed against it, long, slender fingers testing it, coaxing it to open for him. He is hot and groggy, his lawn shirt damp and molded to his body like an obliging skin. He is pale and flushed and sullen and hard; hard and straining against his coarse breeches like the desire that strains against her will.

There is a devil standing outside her door, seducing her with his intent, filling her head with carnal desires that make her weep with shame and wet with wanting. He is clever, this devil; he knows things. He says things. Things that make her tremble, and moan, and howl – and surrender.

No! She will not let him in. She knows, oh, she knows! For if she listens and heeds the devil outside her door, the moment the door opens she will be the beast, tearing open his convent-made shirt, drinking the sweat from his pale flesh, dropping to her knees to stuff him in her mouth like the host, and all the while he will smile down at her, a mocking smile, drugged with victory and power.

She will hate herself. She will call herself names and curse her weakness and pray for the sweet oblivion of hell so she can forget the greedy, sucking noises she makes, even as she yanks her skirts from beneath her knees to dig her own fingers between her thighs.

No! She will not give herself to him. She will spit his leavings onto the floor to show him her devotion! She will bite the tongue that plunges between her lips to prove her esteem! She will cut the flawless skin from his back in streamers with her nails to illustrate her affection! She will do all these things, she tells herself, before she behaves like the harlot she becomes for him. For she knows that the devil outside her door will do the most unspeakable things if she allows it – and she will revel in them if he does.

She can almost hear his rasping breath, and she presses her ear to the door, as if to listen for him. Somewhere within her heart, she knows the truth, but she keeps it well hidden from him. She keeps it locked in an even darker, deeper vault from herself. It is the knowledge that it isn’t what he does to her that breaks her. It isn’t what he makes her do to him, either.

It is the fierce, aching surrender in his face, the blissful, sweet whimper of pleasure in his stern voice. It is the blinding, liberating ecstasy that she feels in his trembling body when she gives in completely, submitting body and soul to the profane. It is the knowledge that he surrenders to her utterly, if she will but let the devil drive.

For it is in that dark moment of crisis, that he becomes a babe, an angel, rearing over her like a being of pure light and breath, and in that moment she is the vessel of something greater than either or both of them, and for that moment, she glimpses the perfection of heaven, for she sees it mirrored in the rapturous, beautiful planes of his face.

The moment, sadly, is fleeting. Pleasure always is, and the contentment in his face fades, and hardens, and soon he is hungry again. Like the old Adam, once he tasted her forbidden fruit, he has never since been satisfied. It is never enough.

The latch moves slightly and she jumps, even though the door is bolted and locked. She wants to run like a child into a corner and cover her eyes until he goes away. The latch is still.

There is a devil waiting outside her door. He is voracious and sweat-slicked and stinking of horses and mud and sex. His breath is hard as iron and his hair is damp and dusty, and she tells herself she doesn’t want it. She tells herself he will go away. She tells herself she isn’t wet for him.

She tells herself this. She says it over and over again until her tongue can no longer form the words. _I won’t let you in_.

There is a devil waiting outside her door. She calls herself a vulgar name. She lifts the latch, and closes her eyes as the door swings open.


	57. Yule Ball

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tri-Wizard Challenge, 2011

“You’ve spoiled everything, Ron!” she cried, and sat outside on the snowy steps and wept.

He heard Weasley’s jealous tirade, of course. He didn’t blame her for wanting to be noticed for more than simply being their convenient crutch; he knew more than most the degradation of allowing himself to be taken advantage of to keep a friend sweet.

He saw her sitting there in her pretty dress, humiliated from the snide remarks from her own House. Karkarov’s oaf, Krum had already bragged that she was as good as bedded tonight.

Not if he had anything to do with it.

~~~~~

She was pretty when her face wasn’t splotched and smeared from crying; it angered him that her own supposedly best friend had been the cause of this. It didn’t take a genius to see the irony that he, Severus Snape, pitied the ugly duckling who just wanted to be a swan.

She was beautiful, and it shamed him to admit to himself he saw her that way.

The Ball was in full swing, students and guests laughing and dancing, copulating in corners and carriages. Here he was, impotently clucking like a mother hen over a distraught, child/woman he barely knew.

~~~~~

Years later, he confessed that he would have given anything to have had the courage to comfort her. He couldn’t, of course. The reasons were many and varied and all boiled down to duty. He wanted to tell her that in the few short minutes he watched her, he saw himself, and knew he needed to let go of his past. He wouldn’t, of course, and again, duty was to blame.

Instead, he told her that he childishly, foolishly fell in love on that night, to a pretty girl in a pretty dress.

A swan on the cusp of flying.


	58. Worthy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Afterlife Challenge, 2011

There was that brief moment, just at the sweet agony of death. I had my chance and I took it.

She stood in a sepia-toned landscape, against a grey sky, and I stumbled to her, my smile of welcome stretching my lips in a desperate parody of happiness. Still, I had to know.

“Did you ever truly love me? Would we ever have been together had I not ruined everything?”

Lily looked at me with patient eyes. “There was never anything there to ruin, Sev.” She turned away.

“Go back. It won’t be easy. But she will be worth it.”


	59. What Does The Mirror Think?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mirror Challenge 2011

Mirrors don’t lie. Well, Muggle mirrors don’t. Magical ones will tell you anything to keep you looking into them; they are greedy and vain. They always want more.

Hermione likes this one; it keeps its mouth shut, for the most part. It said very little when she came to her senses and left him; it refrained from calling her attention to her tear-swollen eyes, her general dishevelment. It neglected to chastise her for skipping meals, avoiding friends and repeating the whispered word “failure” close enough to fog its glass.

As mirrors went, it was the soul of selfless discretion.

~~~~~

Tonight, she will see him. It is unavoidable. You don’t move in the same circles without running into former lovers; it’s inevitable. She has planned, primped, soaked and finally augmented her courage with that of the Dutch persuasion. Now she is dressed, standing before the mirror, looking back into eyes that have seen too much hurt. She wants to believe she looks pretty.

“You look beautiful.”

“You’re just saying that so I’ll stay here staring at myself all night.”

“Probably; I wouldn’t mind. But regardless of _my_ motives, you are beautiful. And _he_ was a complete fool.”

~~~~~

She stares into the mirror, wanting to believe. But mirrors are liars; she has been fooled before.

“I’m afraid.”

“Don’t be. Every man there tonight will wish you were with him. _He_ will, more than any of them.”

She smiles as the dark-haired wizard comes into view and gazes lovingly into the eyes of her reflection.

“But he’ll have to get past me.” He holds her close and whispers, “And I stand by my words: you are beautiful.”

His rich voice is another mirror; an honest one that has given her precious, silvery glimpses into his heart.


	60. Helpless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nightmare Challenge

He flailes, helpless, hopeless, a tangle of arms and legs pressing down on him, cutting off his air, his escape, his sanity.

The dark spectre that ruined his life shows no mercy; he cries pitifully, but no one answers.

He reaches out to her; she callously pushes him away, cold-hearted, unforgiving, as he knew she would forever be.

He screams, begging for time, lashing out, holding onto anything he can reach, until he is unceremoniously dumped outside their bedroom door.

Severus climbed back into bed, and spooned against his wife; swearing under his breath. “Hermione, your bloody cat is insane.”


	61. His Mistress Is...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After I wrote this, I commissioned Patricia Demoreres to create some fan art for the story. It's become more famous than the story.

Some lovers will tell you the moment they looked into one another’s eyes, they knew. Severus Snape did not believe in what was called Love At First Sight, but he did believe in Lust At First Glance.

Who would have thought Severus Snape so vulnerable to the charms of Hermione Granger? Indeed, he’d never really given her that much thought. That is, until the night he saw her at the Anniversary Ball, five years after The-Boy-Who-Lived-Out-Of-Sheer-Dumb-Bastard-Luck had defeated the Dark – erm, Tom Riddle.

Severus had quietly re-entered the Wizarding world two years before, hoping to keep a low profile. Bollocks.

~~~~~

The Ball was in full swing, and Pomona Sprout, of all witches, asked him to dance. Severus was just about to plead an amputated foot when in strutted the most gorgeous pair of legs he’d ever seen. From his vantage point in the back, he saw them, striding confidently into the room, on the most gravity-defying heels he’d ever witnessed. Candy Apple Red. His heart stopped. _Red stilettos_ ; his secret weakness.

“Who the fuck is that?” he breathed, offending Pomona and getting rid of her at the same time. Result. Unfortunately, she left in a huff before answering his question.

~~~~~

He was still shy and awkward enough not to stalk up and introduce himself, but he managed to stroll casually around the hall, trying to draw a bead on those stilettos. They were carrying the sexiest pins in Wizarding Britain. As he looked around, his initial enthusiasm waned. She may have the body of a goddess, but he was convinced she was probably going to have the face of Voldemort’s great-granny. _Not_ , he thought, _that you have much room to talk, Severus_.

He was about to give up, when a gentle hand alighted on his arm. “Professor Snape?” He turned.

~~~~~

She forever teased him about that moment; when he turned around, looked her up and down and blurted, “Merlin’s arseplug! Hermione Granger?”

She tilted her head; her cheeky little grin made him break out in a cold sweat. She was made for sinning, alright – a grown-up, curvy body perched atop red leather stilettos. More brains than the rest of the party-goers put together. In that moment, he knew he was going to make a fool of himself, and he might as well start now. “You’re-you’re not how I remember-“

She took his hand. “You had me at Merlin’s arseplug, Professor.”

~~~~~

He didn’t remember what they talked about as they danced, but he remembered her address. He was there the next day. Three weeks later, after twelve dates, eight home-cooked meals and ten trips to Spinner’s End, she moved in.

Severus had always thought of himself as a decent lover; with Hermione, he really started expanding his repertoire, using his imagination. Hermione was insatiable, dirty, delicious, and possessive. Their first night together, Severus tied her up and masturbated her with one of those red leather heels. She made him lick it clean after he was done. They took turns being on top.

~~~~~

She’s a bossy little witch, you know. Not in public; she is very respectful and only lightly teasing. Enough to let you know that he’s her wizard and “you girls can just fuck off, he’s mine, thank you very much”. He’s secretly delighted. That’s why he married her.

At home, it’s another matter. She wears corsets, and says the filthiest things when he fucks her. No matter what his mood, when she struts across the floor in those red leather heels, oh yes, he drops what he’s doing and gets on his knees.

Her red stilettos are his kryptonite.


	62. In A Moment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Afterlife Challenge 2011

“I don’t want to talk about it!” he bellowed, and looked away. She had known him long enough to understand that it wasn’t anger in his dark voice, but fear.

“I’m not afraid, Severus,” she said, soothingly. She looked down at her wasted hands. “Well, maybe, a little.” She met his dark eyes. “I’m afraid I’ll miss you too much. I don’t like being away from you for so long.”

His scowl dropped from his face like a mask, and he took her in his arms. “My sweet little girl,” he murmured into her hair. “I’ll find you. I promise.”

~~~~~

He stood by the vault and greeted people for hours. Everyone in Wizarding Britain, it seemed, had attended the funeral to pay their respects. Severus stood with his daughter, Jeannette, shaking hand after hand, mouthing the same words, holding hands as if their lives depended on it.

“I’m sure she’s at peace now.”

“If you need anything…”

“We don’t always know the reason for these things.”

_Of course she’s at peace, you dunderheads; she doesn’t have to listen to this shite. I know the reasons. Yes, I need something; I need my precious Hermione here, standing with Jeannie and me._

~~~~~

They had to leave her there, alone, cold in the dark in the tomb with the word _Snape_ carved overhead. Severus took his daughter home, and they sat by the fire, kindred spirits; drinking wine and talking about resuming work they’d planned on the extension to the lab before the… before she…

Father and daughter rose from their chairs as one and crashed together, wailing. Grief tore at them until they were on their knees, rocking each other, exhausted. How long, until they could find their way in the world without her? It was the longest night of their lives…

~~~~~

The old man patted his daughter’s hand. “It’s alright, Jeanette. Your mother was right. It’s nothing to really be afraid of.” He looked at the sweet girl he had watched grow into a fine woman, wife and mother. “You have been a good daughter. I was blessed with two remarkable women in my life.”

And then he was gone. Dimly, he heard Jeannie calling his name. When he awoke, she was still there… or was she?

He smiled. Ah. He’d recognise that sexy, bushy-haired know-it-all anywhere.

When he spoke, he sounded like her teacher of old. “Where’ve you been, Granger?”

~~~~~

She smiled, and kissed his hand, which was smooth and unblemished again. Severus leapt from the bed, and took his young bride in his arms. He felt as randy and eager as a thirty-year-old… because he was.

She grinned, and his heart leapt the same way it had the day he’d asked her to marry him, and she’d pretended to consider, even though he knew she would say yes. “I’ve been right here, waiting for you.”

He even managed a smirk. “Just waiting? All this time?”

She laughed, kissing him hard. “I only left about five minutes ago, you know.”


	63. Fire Opals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hidden Agenda 2011 - This one is so bad, it's almost good.

“Fire opals, Miss Granger. Very rare, and very potent in potions.” He is studied, but relaxed as he prepares the stone. “The trick is to make sure you pulverize it completely to release the spark; that is the actual ingredient you want, Apprentice. The gemdust is merely the catalyst for the conflagration. I will take the first one.”

You nod, watching him gather his cauldron, his mortar and pestle and the opal. It looks as insubstantial as a bubble in his large hands, and when it lands in the mortar, it sounds like a drop of water in a bathtub.

* * *

All of his materials are the best money can buy. No pinchbeck for a Potions master. The mortar/pestle set is particularly magnificent.

The grinding set is carved from lovely white marble, with soft blue veins running throughout. He holds it firmly, his grip familiar from years of experience. As he works, the tool becomes a part of him, as tools will, in the hands of a master. You watch as he confidently holds the mortar in the palm of his large hand. His grip changes as he lowers the rod into the waiting vessel for the first, deep pushing twist.

* * *

You watch, fascinated, as his hand slides the length of the pestle, pressing downward with controlled, powerful pressure. He watches the bowl carefully, alert for any signs of release of the fire, and his grip on the mortar itself shifts and changes as he begins to grind onto the surface with measured, twisting strokes. He grows more determined, more intense, and the pestle seems alive in his pale hand.

You hear a little, soft ‘pop’, and he sighs. “There we go, Apprentice,” he murmurs, and a little trail of smoke rises from the vessel. He tightens his grip and smiles.

* * *

“Now that the stone has released its flame, we can finish it off,” he says, grinding the pestle in earnest.

The bowl shifts under his tightening grip, and he bears down, hard, harder, until you are focused on one thing – your Potions master, his dark hair swinging with each hard, pounding, grinding, twisting stroke, his teeth set, his technique perfect as he moves in time with the sound of his pestle grinding onto the surface. You watch, your breathing in rhythm with his, as he grunts with the effort to bring the stone to its natural, necessary state of perfection.

* * *

With a sudden triumphant sound, he slowly withdraws the grinder from the mortar, breathing heavily, looking down at the vessel carefully for signs that he has given the stone everything it requires to be perfect for his needs. With a satisfied smirk, he gently wipes the tip of the pestle to free it of any leavings. He looks up at you, but something in your expression causes him to look down at his hands again.

He regards the pestle, dangling from his long fingers, and risks a smile. “I think you know how it’s done. It’s your turn now, Apprentice.”

* * *

You watch as he meticulously cleans the utensil, polishing the end with his fingers and then his palm. You’ve watched him do it a hundred times, but today you seem to be looking at it with new eyes, and what’s more, so is he.

Trembling, you walk over to the mortar and pestle, and he stands behind you and drops the fire opal into the bowl. His body is warm and hard against your back. “You must try to make your first stroke count. Intent is the key. You must hold the rod firmly but gently in your palm, Hermione.”

* * *

You pick up the implement, but your right hand is sliding behind your back. Your fingers unbutton his robes, one, two, three, until you have freed his own pestle from the sober cloth that surrounds it. He moans softly.

It, too, is long and pale marble with blue veins running its length. It feels hotter, harder, stronger than the one you hold in your left. Severus gasps, and grabs your waist as he gripped the mortar – firmly, shifting his grip. “The trick is to… to release the spark… to – to provide the catalyst for the… conflagration… now – oh, Hermione!”


	64. The Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Legilimancy Challenge 2011

Deep in the heart of the soul is a room. It holds our hopes, dreams, fantasies, fears.

Severus wavers, afraid, but he is skilled, hidden – dexterous. She is as open and trusting as a babe, yet she slides into his mind like a ninja. He is helpless against her.

He thinks the darkness will hide him, that his soul is so blackened as to be impenetrable. She walks down charred corridors with warped floorboards, fearless.

He wants to be loved, but he is unworthy.

She finds him, in the room deep in the heart of his soul – cowering.

* * *

“If you’re here to redeem me, you’re wasting your time, Granger,” he growls, bearing his teeth; a cornered, frightened animal. “There is nothing here to save,” he leers, lecherously scanning her, “except yourself.”

This is his lie. With a whispered word, she sweeps the corridors clear; the floorboards straighten. The true room of his heart – clean as a child’s tears. He falls to his knees, so clean, and cries uncomprehendingly, “You could have anyone now. Why me?”

Should she tell him the truth? Is his cleansed soul ready for the truth?

He clings to her. She thinks he’s ready.

* * *

“Come home, Severus,” she says, taking his hand. He rises reluctantly, daring to hope. How long does hope languish in the dark before it dies? She thinks she’s caught it in time.

“I am afraid.”

“I know,” she says. Speaking as if he is a child, she croons, “You must be very brave now, Severus. We are leaving the room and going into the world together.”

He blinks in the light; his eyes are haunted and resigned. “You can’t heal me.”

She smiles. “You’re missing the point, Severus. You already have.” She tugs impatiently. “Let’s go.”

They leave the room.


	65. Tread Lightly In Your Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Title from Kirsty McColl

The first time it happens, the initial contact is non unpleasant. A tickle; the prelude to a sneeze.

He is gentle, unseen, undetected. Legilimency is a subtle, elegant art. Her mind is as strong as a fortress – but parts of it are as delicate as a paper fan.

He walks unimpeded here; rooms full of books, spells, Horcruxes and suppressed fear. No surprises.

Except she now realises he’s there – she _welcomes_ him. The walls change; they become soft, velvety, scented – inviting. He sees pillows, wine and candles. He sees himself, in a bed – making love to her. She winks.


	66. The Deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dealing With Lucius Challenge

“How long, Hermione?”

I looked at Lucius, smugly seated at his desk. I slumped. No use lying. “As long as I can remember, Minister.”

“Why have you never told Severus?” He stood and walked to my chair.

“How could I? What would he ever see in someone like me?”

A pale, slender hand caressed my face; a hand that had touched me a thousand times in my dreams, and I looked up. The transforming body changed from the gold of the sun, to the silver of the moon; the man I was in love with.

“I see the world, Hermione.”


	67. Love Tokens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Owl Challenge 2011  
> This little fic came to me when I heard a good friend of mine laugh yesterday, and thought, yeah, someone could fall in love with that laugh.

He knew the year, day and exact time it happened. The moment he fell achingly, stupidly in love with her. He told her a year later to the date, just to prove to himself that it was all real, that the lovely, lively witch in his bed was real and not a pain-induced fantasy. He’d had so many of those.

He had never planned on surviving the war, and planned even less on returning to teach. But where else would he go? When Minerva offered him his old job back, Severus accepted it with much more aplomb than he felt.

* * *

He had been in the Great Hall, looking down at the so-called ‘Golden Trio’. They were talking, laughing, regaling in stories of their war glories, he sneered silently to himself. Severus hated thinking about the war. He didn’t know what to do with himself as it was.

He glanced down at the Gryffindor table just as Miss Granger’s face lit up at a remark from Miss Weasley. She threw back her head and laughed. It was a delicious, sherbert scoop of laughter, sweet and tart in all the right places, and it was so endearing her friends laughed with her.

* * *

It was the most delicious laughter he’d ever heard. He’d never noticed before how beautiful she was when she laughed. True, the past year had give all of them precious little to laugh about, but Severus felt renewed by her sweet laughter. He felt the world open up to possibilities.

He was passing by their table, hoping his very presence would quell their enthusiasm, when Mr. Weasley was delivering his punchline. “Oh, some romantic Hermione is! I asked her to send me a lock of hair as a keepsake; it arrived by return Owlpost. Long, orange hair – from Crookshanks! Cheers!”

* * *

The others fell about with laughter, Miss Granger included, tears of mirth spurting from her eyes. “I had to do something drastic, Ron!” She laughed with the others. It was a pearly, sweet chuckle, not high-pitched or girlish, but lovely, and it fell on Severus’ ears like music.

She continued, “You just wouldn’t take a hint!”

Weasley was laughing. “I got _that_ one! Back me up, sir – most girls let you down easy, but not Hermione. I got dumped by a Owl carrying a bag of cat hair!”

Hermione’s sweet laughter bubbled, and she turned to face her professor.

* * *

“Oh, hello, Professor Snape!” she said, her sweet, welcoming eyes still full of laughter. “I was just trying to explain how some boys can’t take a hint. Ron.” Weasley had the grace to duck his head, but to Severus’ surprise, he saw no wounded pride in the boy, only wistfulness.

“Indeed, Miss Granger,” Severus replied, unwittingly drawing himself into a conversation he had privately scoffed. “When it comes to matters of the heart, I’m afraid there is nothing a fool won’t get used to.”

“Except a bag of cat hair,” Weasley retorted.

“Any love token should be treasured, Mr. Weasley.”

* * *

For a moment the table was silent, and Hermione paused and look up at Severus. _Really, really_ looked at him. Her gaze softened, and she said, “Believe me, sir, when I send someone tokens of love, they’ll know it’s genuine.”

Severus froze, and immediately assumed he was being made fun of. Rather flintily, he replied, “Why, Miss Granger, my heart simply soars to expect tokens from you. Even,” he raised an eyebrow in Weasley’s direction, “owls carrying cat hair.”

The students laughed, and Severus suddenly realised they weren’t making fun of him. They were laughing at his retort, his wit.

* * *

Miss Granger’s cheeks turned pink. “I think you are worthy of a little more than Crookshanks’ cast-offs, sir.” There was respect, and kindness and gentleness and joy in her words, and Severus felt them bloom in his heart. He glanced suspiciously at Potter, who caught his eye, and nodded solemnly.

Potter said, and turned to his girl, the youngest Weasley. “I’d say after the last year, we all deserve a little more.”

Severus looked at the faces of the young people smiling up at him. He wanted to trust this feeling. It felt, for the first time, like he _belonged_.

* * *

Three days later, the owls arrived at during Breakfast and the box was unceremoniously dumped into Severus’ plate. He surreptitiously cast revealing charms; nothing evil. Long, deft fingers opened the tiny box, and inside was a long, curling lock of honey-brown hair, wound around a note.

The note simply read, _when I send a token of love, you’ll know it’s genuine_.

He looked at it for ages, his face smoothly blank. He risked a glance at the Gryffindor table. She was looking at him, and in her eyes he saw his future. The past settled within him like a benediction.

* * *

Just then, a great tawny owl dumped a package into her oatmeal. Grimacing, Hermione fished it out of the lumpy mess, Scourgified it gingerly, and sat it in her lap to open. Severus knew what the package contained: one of his own sable locks, tied with a silver ribbon.

The note within said, _when it comes to matters of the heart, there is nothing you won’t get used to._

She looked up at him, then turned to her friends and said, “I’ll be right back.” She turned and walked toward the Head Table. Severus felt himself grown warm and flushed.

* * *

She approached him carefully, gracefully, still holding her package in her hands, as if it was something precious. She smiled up at him. “Good morning, Sir.”

Severus stood, and stepped down from the dias. “Miss Granger,” he replied, hating the stilted, stiff sound of his voice. They stood face to face, each waiting for the other to speak. Finally, the words came tumbling out together:

“Isitgenuine?”

“AmIsomeoneyouwanttogetusedto?”

They stopped, each trying to appear less socially awkward than reality would indicate. Hermione smiled. In that moment, Severus realised she was genuine, and he would be surprisingly easy to get used to.


	68. The End of A Long Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Behind Closed Doors Challenge 2011
> 
> Author’s Note: I don’t know why I feel the need to write these sometimes, but when the Muse says to write, I have to obey him, or he pouts. I’m starting to feel a little like these are the haiku version of what I write. It’s just a good exercise. I own nothing you see here. Just like to play and pinch their bottoms a little.

The house is cool and quiet as she ascends the stairs. She is tired, hungry, and longs for a hot bath.

The bedroom is in darkness, and she’s too weary to turn on the light to undress. With a curt wave of a wand, the tub fills with hot water.

Naked, she pads to the bathroom, and stops when she sees white flowers floating in the candle-ringed tub. Her nostrils flare with the scent of gardenias and candle-wax.

A pale hand caresses her; a hard, familiar body draws her into a fierce embrace. He kisses her hungrily, welcoming her home.


	69. Enough For Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was so inspired and moved by Melusin’s drabble, I wanted to write something along the same lines. I apologise, Mel, for riding your coattails. I can only defend myself by saying your talent inspires me. Mine will never match yours, but it is my pitiful attempt to follow on. I also make a little nod at Alan Gurganus’ Oldest Living Confederate Widow. I’m an HEA girl, but sometimes, the Muse allows me to grieve through writing, and that’s what he’s doing today.

Hermione sat by his bedside, her constant vigil his only company. For months he lay dying, and daily she bathed and dressed him, fed and nurtured him, preserved his dignity and kept him comfortable.

She sang to him, read to him, turned herself inside out to make him smile or speak, and at the end of each day, when she kissed him goodnight, he caressed her cheek, and said, “Thank you, pet.”

“Do you have everything you need, Severus?”

“I have you. That is enough for now.”

His labored breathing told her his time was nigh, and now she waited.

~~~

What do you do when you have to face life without him?

You cry and you bathe and nurture and comfort and entertain. Because you love him, and he loves you.

Severus was never a man any woman could truly say she knew. Hermione knew that he loved her. On this last day, she learned just how much.

He caressed her cheek, and said, “I had everything I needed, Hermione.”

His labored breathing slowed. He whispered, “You were never really enough, but thank you.”

Hermione recoiled in shock. Tears filled her eyes.

He smiled. “I’m here, Lily.” He was gone.


	70. Questing In The Search For Scientific Knowledge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Questions Challenge, 2011

“Asphodel?”

“Two parts to one part wormwood.”

“Skullcap?”

“Up to three, according to preference.”

“Colour of undergarments?”

“Pardon?”

“Kindly refrain from answering a question with a question, Apprentice Granger. Colour?”

Hermione blushed. “Sort of….orangy-pinkish?”

Professor Snape sneered. “Scientific name? Orangy-pinkish?”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “See for yourself, Professor Snape. Would you like me to show you?”

Severus tilted his head, considering. “In the interest of our scientific research, I think it would be prudent.”

Hermione happily complied, very slowly. Snape considered. “Quite correct. Orangy-pinkish it is, then.”

Hermione gave him a tantilising smile. “Your favourite colour?”

He purred, “Most assuredly.”


	71. Who Do You Love?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Secret Lovers Challenge 2011

“Say it again.”

She smiled, and turned to face him. “I have – twice.”

He gave her a kiss. “Again.”

She held him closer, smiling. “I love you. So very much.”

He frowned. “But not more than – “ He glanced at the door.

She stroked his cheek. “It is a different love. But the way I love you isn’t any less strong.”

“There you are!” Hermione and Brian looked up guiltily into Severus’ black, flashing eyes. “What did I tell you about disturbing your mother? Just because she’s given you a baby sister doesn’t mean she loves you any less!”


	72. The Big Bang - Cold Feet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was my very first challenge in the GrangerSnape100 community, and I was shaking like a leaf when I hit the SEND button. To my surprise and delight, a whole lot of lovely people wrote very nice and encouraging things about it, and thus created a monster.
> 
> "Well, here goes. I just wanted to write this little fluffy piece to offset the ultra-angsty stuff my fics are producing, and dip my toe in the Challenge Waters. Herein lies my contribution to the Cold Feet prompt. I truly welcome any comments. This is the first time I have everconfined myself to 100-word drabbles in sections like this, so I apologise if things sound a little shoehorned. Mimi recommends this as a good method of disciplining your writing, and I agree with her.
> 
> I’ve been told to place my allegiance with the Death Eater camp because they have better cookies. This just sounds so weird to me, but Droxy is a Death Eater, and she has Imperused me to do what she says."

I am already dozing when he slips into bed behind me. I hate patrol nights in winter, when he arrives late from a check of the grounds. He has no manners.

He is a wall of ice that molds against my back. The extremities are the worse, and being the perverse bastard he is, those are the first to assault me. His large nose nuzzles against my neck, and I shrivel like a clam, sprinkled with lemon juice.

“Geroff!” I cry, as his hands come next; cupping my breasts, shrinking my nipples down to hard buttons, devoid of nerve endings.

~~~~~~

I try to pull away, but my lecherous, devious, snarky, evil _bastard!_ of a husband is snuggling closer, chilled to the bone, eager to get warm, inconsiderate of the fact that he’ll destroy me with his –

“Fucking hell!” I jump, a fish on a line. The tops of his long, thin, bony, pale feet press against my poor, frozen soles. His wretched, evil feet are beyond cold. If I didn’t know better –

“What have you been doing? Swimming in the Black Lake?” I yell, flailing around, frantically trying to escape this insidious brand of Death Eater torture. “You’re killing me!”

~~~~~~

“Shush,” he rumbles, selfishly pulling closer. “It’s my job. I have to go outside in the cold. Ergo, I am cold. Your job, witch,” he softens his voice, knowing I’ll melt, in spite of his glacial feet, “is to warm my bed, and therefore warm me. I can’t help you feel so warm and sweet.”

Bastard. Bastard, _bastard._ My brilliant, snarky, selfish, sweet, inconsiderate, knicker-soakingly sexy _bastard_ husband. I relent, as he knew I would. He smugly settles against me, marginally warmer. Minutes pass as my body heat is sucked away into him. My gloriously demented, _Dementor_ husband. He relaxes.

~~~~~~

“Funny, that,” I say, nonchalantly.

He makes a delicious rumbling sound, like a little bear. “Funny what? Shush, I have class in four hours.”

“Funny for you to have cold feet.”

“Stop talking bollocks, woman. I need sleep.”

“Yes, funny _you’re_ the one with cold feet.” I take a deep breath. “I’m not. Not anymore.”

For a moment, he doesn’t respond. Suddenly, he puts a warm hand on my shoulder and gently turns my face to his. He looks down at me with a mixture of hope and confusion. A smile he reserves only for me spreads over his face.

~~~~~~

“Are you sure, Hermione? Is this really what you want?”

I nod. His smile heats up the room another twenty degrees. “I’m ready, Severus. I want this, too.”

There is a new extremity making its presence known. It is far from cold; in fact, it is burning against my back – a large, hot pole. His eyes light up a few more degrees. We both register the source of this new, life-giving heat.

The late hour is unimportant. The morning class is forgotten. He rolls me onto my back, stroking my body with fingers that are loving, warm and pleasurable.

~~~~~

“My precious girl, Hermione,” he croons, and I know things are going to get a lot hotter in about twenty seconds. His mouth devours mine in a kiss of pure, molten sensuality.

I have my own tricks. You don’t live with a man like Severus Snape, and not learn how to push a few buttons of your own. Soon, he and I are sweating, burning, crying each other’s names over and over.

And that’s merely the opening ceremonies. Just when I feel I’m going to burst into flames, he slides deliciously home.

“Let’s see if we can make this baby.”


	73. Cufflink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cufflink Challenge 2014

It flew from his cuff in a moment of furious gesturing, when he was full of rage and resentment. Berating a class of third-year students was the only thing Severus could do to vent his frustration over the fools who had the moronic temerity to allow Black to sashay out of Azkaban.

The cufflink pinged across the floor of the Potions classroom, skittering out of sight. No one moved. A quiet _”Accio”_ filtered through the white noise in his head.

“You dropped this, sir,” Granger said, and gently placed it on his desk. She lowered her eyes, afraid.

* * *

It slipped from his trembling, nerveless fingers and bounced down the steps, and he fell after it. The Dark Lord was especially peeved this evening, and Severus was the recipient of his wrath. He had made it back to Hogwarts on nothing more than pig-headed stubborness, refusing to die simply because it was what his detractors wanted.

A gentle hand touched his sweating face. “Go away,” he moaned feebly, and wonder of wonders, she disobeyed him. She helped him to stand, and he pushed her away, mumbling a grudging thanks. Before she left, Granger silently placed the errant cufflink in his hand.

* * *

Severus felt something strange and cold at this throat. The pain was receding. He floated in a drowsy, un-place just this side of death. A person/thing was breathing unnaturally hard in his ear, whispering, “Hang on… hang on…”

Later, when he regained consciousness, Madam Pomfrey told him of how Hermione Granger had saved his life – by joining the edges of the open wound and applying Dittany and every healing spell she knew so he wouldn’t bleed to death.

And how had she done it? By threading his cufflinks through the holes left by Nagini’s fangs and clamping the wound closed.

* * *

Hermione waited until he finished buttoning his shirt, then placed a box in his hands. It contained a pair of malachite and silver cufflinks. They perfectly matched her necklace, _his_ wedding gift to her.

“They’re beautiful,” Severus declared. “Trust you to make the perfect choice.”

“I always make good choices. I chose _you_ ,” she agreed warmly. “And I happen to think you’re beautiful as well.”

“Hardly,” he scoffed, shooting his cuffs. “But I promise I shall take good care of them.”

“I know you will. But even if you don’t,” she laughed, “I could never resist running after your cufflinks.”


	74. Freedom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Freedom Challenge 2014.
> 
> This was dedicated to my Father. He would have been 88 yesterday.

* * *

There is freedom in dying. For some, it is a quiet sort of freedom; they give up, let go, breathe the sweet sigh of release. Some might even call it lazy.

There is the freedom of wrestling oneself from the greedy arms of life. Running away, not from Death, but toward it, crying, “Take me! Take me!” Some call it selfish.

Life is cheap for some. Death demands payment. Severus called that Duty.

He traded his worthless life for sterling death.

Life isn’t about freedom. It is about enslavement to the few things that give pleasure. Freedom is not free.

* * *

When Hermione Weasley looks at Severus Snape’s tomb, she sees neglect, and abuse. Weeds grow over a slab. It has been defaced by foolish slogans that make the marble look substandard, miserly.

On the tenth anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts, dignitaries talk of battles fought and won for the freedom of all Wizarding folk, yet Hermione knows that their words are as meaningless and tacky as the graffiti on Snape’s tomb.

She tunes out the drone of pretentious men, puffed up with official pride, and weeps for the forgotten man who provided them with the keys to that freedom.


	75. Disarm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disarm Challenge 2014

“The task is very simple,” Professor Snape explained. “You are to disarm your opponent.”

Hermione lowered her eyes to the parchment and wrote a single word: _disarm_.

The rest of her Eighth-year DADA class murmured amongst themselves, as their professor paired up duos for the lesson. Maurice Filchner, a handsome eighteen-year-old Ravenclaw who saw himself as Hogwarts’ Don Juan, sidled up to Hermione. “I guess all the other opponents are taken,” he said, his smirk of victory already smeared over his shiny face.

A pale hand grabbed his shoulder. “You will be working with Miss Mackey, Mister Filchner,” Snape intoned.

* * *

His smirk rivaled that of Filchner’s. “Miss Granger will be facing me,” he added. “Off you go.”

Filchner gave their professor a looks-could-hex glower, but obediently loped over to Julie Mackey, who looked as if Christmas had come early.

Snape faced Hermione again, and crooked his finger with a beckoning motion. With a purring voice that sounded too intimate for class, he challenged, “Let’s see how disarming you can be, Miss Granger.”

Hermione could feel the blush wash over her face like a stain. DADA had taken on a new significance since Snape had returned to teaching after the war.

* * *

He seemed more relaxed, but every time Hermione caught his eye, he looked at her with a soft gleam that made her stomach do strange and wonderful things. Just like now; even among the spells flying from one student to the next, the distance between them was at once too short and too far. His dark, flashing eyes swept over her, slowly, like a predator. Hermione shivered, caught in his electrifying gaze─

Her wand flew out of her hand and landed confidently in his. Snape looked rapaciously smug. “There’s always more than one way to disarm an opponent, Miss Granger.”

* * *

He twirled her wand in his fingers like a drummer, then he offered it back to her, handle first. _Two can play that game, Severus Snape_ , she thought. As she reached for her wand, she deliberately brushed his fingers with hers, and was gratified to see his eye widen in surprise. With her eyes locked with his, Hermione parted her lips, and licked them slowly. She took a deep breath, and his eyes flicked from her face to her swelling breasts.

His wand skittered from his hand. “I completely agree, Professor Snape. There are _many_ ways of disarming one’s opponent.”

* * *

Something in Snape changed, and the smirk shifted from knowing to admiration. “Indeed, Miss Granger.” He stepped forward, until only she could hear him. “I will admit, I have found your presence here more disarming that usual,” he confessed. “I _might_ be guilty of orchestrating Mister Filchner to another partner.”

The butterflies in Hermione’s stomach took flight. “I’m glad, Professor.”

His expression softened. “Perhaps we could discuss this at length. Say, tonight, at dinner?” His eyes held heat and hope, and Hermione could not prevent the smile of delight from playing on her lips.

“I’d be delighted, Severus,” she said.

* * *

“Good. Shall we say, half-six─”

A large _BANG!_ exploded nearby. Several girls screamed in horror.

Instantly Severus became Snape again. “Calm down, all of you! What is the meaning of this?” he thundered.

Maurice Filchner danced around, howling in panic. Julie Mackey was weeping. “I’m sorry, so sorry!”

“Mackey, stop blubbering! I’m awarding you ten points for clever use of spell execution.” He approached the pair, rolling his eyes. “Stop caterwauling, Filchner! Infirmary, now. Tell Madam Pomfrey what happened. And stop being a big-girl’s blouse.”

He turned to Hermione, and to her surprise, he winked. “Your limbs will grow back.”


	76. Written On The Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written in Blood Challenge 2014

Severus looks across the expanse of graves and wills himself not to weep. There are roses and strange little flowers on her grave. Hollyhocks, he thinks.

She hated hollyhocks.

The tiny hand of their daughter anchors him, keeps him in place, mindful of his destiny.

This magical child they made, so like her mother in all the ways that count, loves him with Hermione’s sweet integrity. She doesn’t ask why they are here. She is old enough to read the warning her mother wrote in her own blood:

“ ** _DE don’t let them hurt_** ─”

 _Don’t worry, love_ , he thinks. They didn’t.

* * *

It’s too soon to make big changes. Everyone tells him he should take a year off─travel, perhaps. He nods and changes the subject. Nothing holds any wonder to him, not without Hermione.

Short arms wrap around his neck, and a tender kiss reminds him that, to her, he is not a Death Eater, or killer, or the avenger of her mother’s death. He is just Pa, who would lasso the moon for her.

“Please don’t be sad, Pa,” she entreats. “Mummy hates seeing you cry.”

Severus looks at his troubled daughter’s face. “She does?”

The silvery voice answers, “I do.”


	77. Mourning Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snape's Tears Challenge 2014

He cries in his sleep, you know. In the middle of the night, I will wake to the sound of his quiet sobs. Tears stream down his gaunt cheeks, and he whimpers her name…

In the morning, Severus doesn’t acknowledge the damp pillow, the stuffy nose. Perhaps he doesn’t remember his dreams. Perhaps he doesn’t dare.

He’s a good husband, despite his old reputation. His flinty exterior never hints at the torment he suffers when she has him in night’s embrace.

But I know he still mourns for her. And I cry too, knowing she will never let him go.


	78. Trail of Tears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snape's Tears Challenge 2014
> 
> A man’s tears will break me every time. Pat Conroy once wrote that men die sooner than women because ‘their faces don’t get watered enough’. All characters belong to JK Rowling. This series is unbeta’d, so all mistakes are mine. Eh, it’s a bit corny, and the ending’s a bit trite. But I still think Severus is right.

Each tear was a blessing and a curse. They fell like flawed diamonds, each holding mystery and the hope of redemption.

Hermione watched numbly as Severus Snape gave his only gift to the son of his only love. Later, as she walked among the dead, Hermione came upon his body, lying apart from the others, like a plague victim’s. Hermione touched his hand; it was as cold and unyielding as he had been in life. Amid the dirt and blood smeared on his face, two salt trails marked the sacred path his tears had traveled. Hermione tenderly bathed them away.

* * *

Later, when truth and death and victory had time to ferment, they felt permitted to mourn Snape. Hermione thought of his tears, and gave him back her own.

No one would ever love _her_ with such depth.

No one would ever mourn _her_ with such grief.

No one would ever be as faithful, as dutiful, as fierce in their desire for _her_.

And close on the heels of that thought, she realised, _and no one ever felt that way about Severus Snape, either._

He deserved more. He deserved someone’s utmost regard.

In that broken-hearted moment, she gave it to him.

* * *

Old and forgotten in her bed, Hermione remembered that day with no regrets. As she dozed, she felt a warm, gentle hand close over hers, and when she opened her eyes he was there.

“You wasted too many tears on me, Hermoine,” he said sadly. “Didn’t it ever occur to you I wasn’t worth them?”

She shook her head. “No, Severus. You were worth so much more.”

“Come home with me then.” He held out his hand. It never occurred to her not to take it.

“Where are we going?”

He smiled. “To a place where there _are_ no tears.”


	79. Triangle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Multiple Challenges 2014
> 
> This is story of three people: Severus, Hermione and one other. I leave it to you to decide who the third party is, who is speaking in which paragraph, and to whom they are referring. Things are not always what they seem. I look forward to your answers.

Sometimes I think I preferred you out of my life, undead, unknown and uncaring about me. It was safer than loving you. I would have surrendered everything to you; I would have become too docile, too eager to please. I would have swamped my vessel with misplaced, unappreciated largesse.

Now, I see you in the arms of the one you love. It angers and disappoints me. I was so sure you could never be truly happy.

At least, not with anyone who wasn’t me.

You see, if you had died, it would have been easy for me to die too.

* * *

I hate the way he looks at you. So vain and smug, so sure and greedy. He’s forgotten all he bothered to learn about you. He doesn’t appreciate that we almost lost you, and how important you are to us. He looks at your graceful hands and sees only how they can be used for his pleasure; he looks at your mouth and only imagines them around his entitled prick.

And most of all, I hate the way your eyes slide past me to him, as if, once again, I’m weighed and found lacking. As if I’m not quite enough.

* * *

They say you never appreciate someone or something until they’re gone. I think I know a little about how that feels. That doesn’t stop me from wishing my life had begun and ended without ever knowing you.

I have grown so weary of your polite, pitying rejections. They have grated on my pride until it’s nothing but shreds of the only thing that once had the power to hold me together. Either claim me, or cut me lose. I can learn to live again in the world without you either way, but this limbo between is worse than being undead.


	80. No Heart Is Lost If Properly Given Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Valentine's Challenge

The heart was a typically, luridly red, painstakingly drawn and cut out by ungainly, not-quite-coordinated hands. It was far from ideal; far from perfect. The lettering was shaky; the handwriting of a five-year-old. _I love you_ , it said. Three small but significant words, painstakingly sputtered across the centre of the badly-rendered heart. There was even glitter on it; a dusting of it clung to his fingers.

He held it in his hands, trying to remember when it had been done, what impetus had been behind the creation of it. Valentine’s day, of course. It had been created for Valentine’s day.

* * *

He looked up into the eyes of his beautiful wife. “Is everything alright, Severus, love?” she asked, her eyes warm and brimming with love.

He tried to answer, but couldn’t. He wanted to tell Hermione how he felt in this moment, but age and illness and his own failing mind had robbed him of almost everything. The knowledge that he loved her, and she loved him, however, could never be taken away from him.

He gave her the heart, as flawed and crudely-wrought as the real one he’d given her long ago. “I made this for you. To keep forever."


	81. We Are Not A-Mused

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad Sex Challenge 2014
> 
> Yes, this is supposed to give you second-hand embarrassment.

They fused to one another, their breath coming in short pants. More like hot pants.

Severus glanced up with suspicious eyes, then shrugged and bent down to the young woman in his arms.

“Oh, Severus,” she moaned, “Touch me!”

“Gladly, my goddess.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Oh, you silly little chit, you taste wonderful!”

“Oh, that feels so good, Severus, but don’t call me chit. It’s just naff.”

He stared down at his amour, and with his eyes burning with desire, he tore open her bra, revealing her beautiful breasts.

“Oy!” she complained. “I paid a packet for this bra!”

“Sorry.”

* * *

“Oh, Severus, yes, Severus. Oh, there! Lick my pulsating norks until they pout!”

He raised his head and looked at her strangely. “Why are you talking that way?”

“Just shut up and do it!”

Their moans and cries rent the air. Hermione mewled, “Oh, Severus, your cock is so hot, it feels like it’s throbbing—”

“Yes, witch, sit on my throbbing cock!”

Hermione stopped dead. “Okay, what the hell is going on?”

Severus growled, “Why are you not moving? My throbbing cock is just—”

“Okay, Snape, give it a rest.”

They glowered into the darkness. “What’s going on?”

* * *

The bedroom door opened, and a man with dark hair and warm eyes came in, carrying grocery bags. “Sorry I’m late. I ran some errands and I…” His voice died when faced with the murderous scowls of the two naked people. “Oh, dear. What’s wrong?”

Severus indicated over the man’s shoulder. “Teddy’s been writing smut—by herself. Again! It’s putrid. The woman’s a menace, Dahlra.”

Hermione pleaded, “Teddy, promise you won’t put us in bed together unless Dahlra’s here, alright?”

Dahlra turned to Teddy. “Promise, dear?”

At her sheepish nod, he smiled. “Good.” He turned to the couple. “Now, where were you?”


	82. These Things Grow Better With Practice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad Sex Challenge 2014

They lay, side by side, in the darkened room, keenly aware of one another.

“They say the first time is never all that,” she said, feigning a cheerful, let’s-make-the-best-of-it tone.

“Who says?”

“Oh, you know. People who… know these things, I suppose.”

“Let me get this straight, Granger,” he said, turning to face her. “It’s common knowledge that first-time sex is awful, but gets better?”

She sighed. “So they say.”

Severus lay back. “Well, good thing.”

“Yeah.”

She could _hear_ his smirk in the dark. “If that’s your idea of bad sex, the next time might kill us.”

“Oh, yeah.”


	83. Smoke Rings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rescue Me Challenge 2014
> 
> For Droxy, so be warned, no HEAs here. Nothing to see.

Before, he was just an angry, brittle shell, lashing out. His anger radiated like a wheel with no friendly spokes to circumvent. Hermione thought he hated the world, but in reality, it was personal. Everything, including the world, was personal.

Later, when he survived, and some of the spokes were broken, or gone, never to return, he still turned his watchful, wary gaze three-sixty, wand at the ready, trusting no one, even the dead ones.

Perhaps he trusted them least of all.

 _I would like to be your friend, Professor_ , she whispered into his ear.

“What for?” he answered indifferently.

* * *

“Why do you wear black all the time?” She asked one day, fetching his healing potion.

It was probably the best question she’d ever asked him. It certainly was the one that derailed him.

Snape answered her two days later. “I’m in mourning.”

Hermione made her excuses and fled. He had made her cry only once before, and she never forgot the gloating triumph in his eyes as she ran weeping from the classroom. She had been a child then; now it would break her to see his satisfied sneer, knowing someone else was hurting as much as he was.

* * *

He lit a cigarette and passed it to her. She had picked up the habit from him; another thing she would be better off without.

“Will you ever be able to love me?” she said, as he lay beside her, blowing smoke rings into the air above the bed.

She hoped he wouldn’t answer. He took another deep drag on his cigarette.

“Why would I want to do that, Granger?”

“Because we could be happy.” She turned to him, plucking the smouldering fag from his fingers. “Because you’re alive and she’s dead.”

His look was pity-filled. “Who says I’m alive?”

* * *

She left him the next day. Harry had warned her; _Snape’s broken. I know you want to rescue him, but he’s beyond repair._

Hermione had so wanted to prove him wrong. Victory should have meant peace for everybody. Harry and Ron had moved on, making homes and babies and happiness for themselves. Why couldn’t she?

She saw Snape ten years later, while volunteering in a soup kitchen. By that time, she was nobody’s saviour; just another recovering alcoholic with a smoker’s hack. He was destitute, and starving.

Both had gone Muggle.

He didn’t see her, and she didn’t recognise him.


	84. Vertical Expression of Horizontal Intent, or Let’s Face The Dancing and Muse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dialogue Only and Conversations On A Dance Floor Challenge 2014

“Hello! Dance with me.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Sorry, that was a little presumptuous. How are you, Professor Snape?”

“Why do I get the feeling you couldn’t give a dead bat’s spleen ‘how I am’, Miss Granger? But enough about me. Why do you want me to dance with you?”

“Erm, well, you see…”

“Ah. You don’t want the feckless Mister Weasley to think you’re a poor wallflower who can’t even get the Greasy Git to ask you to dance.”

“Well, I wouldn’t put it like that—”

“But it’s the truth, isn’t it?”

“Maybe I should just go, then.”

* * *

“Well, Weasley _does_ seem to be glancing in this direction quite a bit over his partner’s shoulder.”

“Prat.”

“You’re not helping your case, Miss Granger.”

“I didn’t mean you! I just—Oh! Well, okay. I can waltz.”

“You’ve grown terribly quiet, Miss—”

“Please call me Hermione. Miss Granger sounds like I’m still in school.”

“Merlin forbid I’d be waltzing with a student.”

“Well, that’s true.”

“Stop giggling.”

“But—”

“You want to make Weasley jealous, don’t you?”

“Well, yes.”

“And you _did_ ask me to dance, didn’t you?”

“I did, but—”

“Then a little gravitas is in order.”

* * *

“You know, you’re a really good dancer. I mean, _really_ good.”

“The tone of surprise in your voice does wonders for my ego, M-Hermione.”

“I’m sorry. I just, well, I shouldn’t be surprised, really.”

“Oh?”

“Well, you _are_ very graceful. You know, when you walk.”

“Kind of you to say so. And when did this epiphany occur?”

“Oh, I’ve always thought you moved very gracefully. And you have lovely…”

“Yes? Do go on; I can only assume you’re drunk. I wish to take full advantage of your inebriation. Flatter away.”

“I’m not drunk! If you must know, I think you…”

* * *

“Well, thank you for the dance, Professor.”

“I think under the circumstances, you should call me Severus.”

“And what circumstances are those?”

“Your face is flushed. You’re stroking my shoulders. You’re cheeky, almost-but-not-quite flirtatious, and you’re dragging out this compliment of yours so we’ll have to keep dancing.”

“You got all that from ‘I think you…’?”

“I’m an astute observer of body language.”

“Perhaps you’ll ask _me_ to dance next time.”

“I plan to.”

“Well, I only know how to waltz.”

“How fortunate. The next song happens to be one.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ll make sure it is.”


	85. Steward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snow Removal Challenge 2014

Of course it snows; it’s Scotland, after all. Every year, winter is hard and pitiless, yet it brings with it the soothing blanket of snow.

Even now, years later, Hermione thinks that the snow makes Hogwarts look clean. It covers up the ravages of war and repairs made in haste and repented in leisure. It covers the multitudes of sins committed by Light and Dark alike.

Hermione thinks about him when it snows. Against the backdrop of swirling snow, crow-black against the white, looking pale and ghostly even when alive, he was like some otherworldly creature from a fairy tale.

* * *

Only when it snows can she remember his face, framed by black hair, looking at her with an expression that seemed like a gift for her and the snow.

Sometimes she wishes that they could have died together, lying side by side, letting the purifying snow cover them in its blanket forever.

Instead, she and her daughter come every winter, and clear away the snow on his tomb. Snow is not for hiding him; it is supposed to ornament and protect him. He’s not supposed to be dead.

She brushes away the snow, and whispers, “Be at peace, Severus Snape.”


	86. La Petit Mort du Chocolate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snape's Birthday Challenge 2014  
> Too long to be a drabble, really, but it is in 100-word bites, so...

Hermione Granger remembered too well the first thing she was told when she began her tenure at Hogwarts as its new Transfigurations mistress.

“When dealing with the Headmaster of Hogwarts,” Minerva McGonagall said, “there is one subject we avoid like the plague: his birthday.”

It was common knowledge that Headmaster Snape despised any reference to his date of birth like most people hated the common cold – it’s something everyone knows they’ll eventually have to put up with because everyone gets one, but best left to ignore and sweat it out so that it will go away as soon as possible.

* * *

“It seems a shame to ignore it, but he’s quite firm on the subject,” the deputy headmistress continued, smiling at her former protégé. “Now that you’re here, perhaps you can help.” With a smile, the older witch left Hermione to puzzle over this cryptic statement.

Since the war and Professor Snape’s reinstatement as Headmaster, Minerva had explained, the denizens of Hogwarts had always treated January 9 like any other day, studiously avoiding the headmaster’s birthday as a sort of apology. He was usually no different either; perhaps a little more curt than usual, but completely happy to ignore the day.

* * *

Everyone from Peeves to the youngest first-year Hufflepuff was part of the school-wide conspiracy: the very mention of the word ‘birthday’ was never uttered in the headmaster’s presence on the ninth of January.

So it was with unicorn-in-the-lumos horror that the staff and students of Hogwarts watched as the Mistress Granger rose from her chair during breakfast on the day in question, pressed her wand to her throat and murmured, “ _Sonorus_. Hello. Excuse me everyone, may I have your attention?”

The Great Hall went deadly silent. Forks halted midway to mouths. Looks of growing dismay passed from table to table.

* * *

She held her glass of pumpkin juice aloft. “Please join me in wishing our esteemed headmaster a joyous happy birthday!”

Eyes closed sympathetically, as at least a hundred souls realised that Professor Granger was about to become hippogriff food.

“Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday, dear Headmaster…”

Only the first years, stoned on french toast and still sleepy besides, joined in heartily, while older, wiser students murmured behind their serviettes, not wanting to be caught in the act by said headmaster. He sat motionless at the table; it was as if he’d been carved from stone.

* * *

The excruciatingly feeble singing effort thankfully petered out by the last, “Happy Birthday to you,” and the young professor led the congregation in a round of applause that was painful in its lack of enthusiasm. To refer to it as lukewarm would have required heating it up by several degrees.

With a little frown of confusion, Professor Granger sat back down and looked at the Deputy Headmistress helplessly. McGonagall patted Hermione’s hand sympathetically, as the Great Hall grew more cavernous in the following silence.

Finally, Headmaster Snape rose to his feet as if heading out to attend his own execution.

* * *

He looked down at her, his expression bland but far from unreadable. “Thank you, Professor Granger, for reminding me why I never look forward to my birthday. Students, please finish your breakfast and head toward your first class.”

The Hall burst into a nervous, giggly sort of chatter, as if the students were making up for lost time. As the last of the bacon was shoved into the last mouths, the Deputy Headmistress leaned over and whispered something into Professor Granger’s ear, which made her turn a funny shade of green, and quickly exit the room via the faculty door.

* * *

“Stupid, _STUPID!_ ” Hermione moaned in time with the pounding of her head against her chamber door. It was bad enough that she’d wanted to do something so mad as to lead the student body in a round of Happy Birthday, but she felt horrible that she’d obviously embarrassed her boss, Severus ‘War Hero’ Snape, which was never going to be a good thing.

“How could I have been such an idiot?” she hissed.

Well, of course she knew how. The realisation made her want to beat her head against her door several more times. She was mad about the man.

* * *

Oh, he still looked and sounded the way she remembered as a student, but somehow, when she returned to Hogwarts last fall to step into the role the deputy headmistress had relinquished, Hermione had seen him with a very different set of eyes.

Where he had been repressive and biting, he was merely austere. Where he’d been sallow and greasy, he was now pale and aesthetic. He was still the same man who had made her feel inadequate and unworthy, and yet the Headmaster who had welcomed her to Hogwarts during her interview was calm, tranquil – he was practically polite.

* * *

Of course, he still suffered fools not a jot, and that was the problem. She’d just made a fool of herself in front of the student body.

Afterward, Minerva had leaned over and whispered, “Hermione, when I said you might think about doing something special for the Headmaster’s birthday, that wasn’t precisely what I had in mind. You know how he deplores public displays. In truth, I was hoping for something a little less, shall we say, idiotic?”

Hermione had glanced from her former Head of House to the cool profile of the Headmaster, and fled like a first year.

* * *

She looked wistfully at her table. The Headmaster’s cake sat in a transparent box charmed to wash with the House colours at intervals: blue and gold, green and silver, red and gold, yellow and black. It threw prisms of light over the glossy surface of the cake she had so lovingly prepared. It was a gorgeous cake, if she did say so.

A specialty of sorts – her award-winning _Death by Chocolate_ cake. She’d ordered the dark chocolate especially from Honeydukes. It was so scrumptious it was all she could do to stop sampling it long enough to ice the cake.

* * *

At least she wouldn’t be an embarrassment there – seriously, who doesn’t love chocolate?

Just to keep things interesting, she decided to deliver it herself. Who knew? Perhaps they might share…. a piece… of cake…

Hermione groaned aloud. Yes, after that incredible display of lunacy, Severus Snape would be champing at the bit to spend some private time with her. As if.

Still, it never hurt to be prepared. She put on her nicest robe (Petrol-blue with velvet lacings – she knew better than to try to tempt the Headmaster with Slytherin green), picked up the cake and started for his study.

* * *

Severus contemplated celebrating his birthday in the usual fashion, by sulking and getting slightly inebriated. If it wasn’t a school night, he sometimes pushed the boat out and got pleasantly pissed, but the sulking part was de rigeur. He poured two fingers into a glass, snorted, added another. Not like anyone gave a toss, did they? Well, perhaps Granger cared a little; enough to embarrass herself, anyway.

He tried not to remind himself of the debacle in the Great Hall. It saddened him that he was so universally feared that no one wanted to even present him with birthday wishes.

* * *

He sat, still mulling over Granger. At first, he thought she was taking the piss, but further observation showed that she was genuinely embarrassed, and the stricken look on her face when he reprimanded her made him feel guilty for the rest of the day. But why shouldn’t someone sing him birthday wishes? Every year Minerva would be the first to jump up and start croaking “Happy Birthday” to Filius or Pomona or even Hagrid, but never him.

Hell, even Tom Riddle got birthday cake. _Not me_. This made Severus’ sulk slide a little further down into the self-pity range.

* * *

It was as if they were still reminding him that, no matter what he’d done, no matter how much he’d proved himself to be on the side of the right, he was not worthy of something as simple, as insignificant, even, as a round of “Happy Birthday” on the ninth of January.

And yet, he still entertained the hopes that Hermione might stop by his study for a glass of wine, and perhaps, if he were very lucky, she might bring a gift, or even a birthday kiss.

Yes, he’d sort of been hoping for one of those from Granger.

* * *

Now that she was a colleague and no longer a student, he could enjoy her openly – not like the furtive pleasure he took while she was a young woman, not during a war, not that young-

Severus sighed. One lousy little gift wouldn’t kill them, would it? A pity gift would be better than nothing. Even a pity snog would feel almost real.

The clock chimed nine, and he sighed as self-pity slid further down into full-on depression. He looked at the firewhisky. _Screw it_ , he thought, pouring himself another drink. _I’ll just have to celebrate all on my lonesome_.

* * *

Hermione shrunk the birthday cake box down to the size of a matchbox and tucked it into her pocket. Calling on the courage of her House’s mascot, she squared her slender shoulders, checked her reflection one last time to make sure her mad hair was at least pretending to behave, and headed for the Headmaster’s study.

She had just reached the entrance and was about to announce herself when Poppy Pomfrey walked by, her eyes lighting up at seeing Hermione.

“Good evening, Professor Granger!” She gave Hermione a knowing wink. “Don’t we look lovely tonight.”

“I’m bringing a peace offering.”

* * *

They shared a quiet laugh, and Madam Pomfrey, who had become a good friend over the years, leaned forward and whispered, “I heard about the, um, incident this morning at breakfast.”

Hermione cringed. “I know! I was trying to-“

“Say no more, dear,” Poppy interrupted, holding up a hand. “I know! The man is simply a bugbear about his birthday. I’m sorry Minerva put you on the spot like that.”

Hermione looked confused. “I ruined everything! She told me to try something different this year, but I completely misread the entire situation.” She blushed slightly. “I’m trying to make amends.”

* * *

Poppy smiled. “Well, amends are well-made by those robes, dear. I’d say you have a good sporting chance at forgiveness on your dress sense alone!”

“Thank you, Poppy.” Hermione gestured at her robe. “I figured it couldn’t hurt to try and get on his good side using the one feminine wile I’ve managed to learn.”

“I’m sure he’ll forgive you, dear. He’s not as ferocious as people think.”

Hermione smiled, and turned to alert the Headmaster of her presence. As she spoke the password, Poppy added, “At least you didn’t bring chocolate. That’s definitely a step in the right direction.”

* * *

Hermione froze. “What?”

Poppy shook her head sympathetically. “Can’t abide it, you know. I had had to cram massive amounts down the poor man’s throat during his career as a spy. Chocolate was one of the best panaceas for the after-effects of Cruciatus, and heaven knows Severus suffered quite a few rounds of that during his spying days with You-Know-Who.” With a laugh, she added, “I honestly think he’d rather _take_ a round of Crucios than to ingest another ounce of chocolate.”

Hermione stared at her friend in shock as the enormous spiral staircase lifted her toward the Headmaster’s study.

* * *

Severus glanced up just as Hermione was dumped literally on his doorstep, and she could feel her face freezing in a rictus of what was supposed to be a smile. He stood immediately upon noticing her, a glass of amber liquid in hand, and as he opened his mouth to speak, she heard herself say, “IdidntknowyouhateditbutIdiditanywayandImsorry.”

He blinked, and looked at her as if she’d just grown a hump. “Pardon?” he replied.

She flushed and put her hands behind her back. “I’m so sorry, Severus! Minerva suggested I do something for your birthday, and you hate it and chocolate and—”

* * *

He, Severus decided, had drunk far too much before Hermione arrived. She was making no sense whatsoever; the deliciously form-fitting robes were doing his concentration in.

“Wait – Minerva told you WHAT?”

Flustered, Hermione said, “She told me you hated birthdays worse than the common cold?”

When she tried to stammer her apology about what happened during breakfast, she finished by explaining, “Professor McGonagall told me you hated any mention of your birthday, then Poppy told me you hated Chocolate.”

Severus stared at Hermione, then growled, “Idiotic Gryffindor furball!”

This time, it was her turn to demand, “Excuse me?”

* * *

Hermione stared at him, trying to decide whether this was a good time to leave. Indignantly, she swallowed, “Well, that’s not a very nice thing to be called, even if I did ruin your birthday!”

Severus started, then rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t talking about you, Granger. Here,” he said, pouring and passing her a glass of whisky. “Drink this. You’re as addled as I am.”

“ _I’m_ clearly not the one that’s addled!” Hermione insisted, taking a fortifying gulp of the fiery liquid. She smacked her lips and looked up at him. “I love whisky. What the hell is this?”

“Same hooch Minerva gives me every year for Christmas.” He frowned. “Why on earth did that meddling harpy tell everyone I hated my birthday?” Almost to himself, he murmured, “Is that why everyone behaves so strangely?”

Hermione, confused, took another drink. The whisky, Scottish of course, was as rough as the burr in Minerva’s brogue and burned all the way to her groin, where it settled in and pulsed merrily away, reminding her why she had long ago vowed never to drink whisky with Severus. His voice made too many parts of her body pulse inconveniently at the wrong times.

* * *

Finally, she sighed, and reached into her robe pocket. “And for the final humiliating fiasco of the evening, I baked you a cake you’re going to hate.”

Bemused, Severus gave her a hint of a smile. “Why? Are you that bad a cook?”

“No! As it so happens I am a very good baker,” she retorted, taking another drink. _Sip, Hermione, sip_. “However, Poppy informed me it’s your least favourite type of cake, thus completing my birthday debacle in every way.”

Severus looked pained. “Stop drinking whisky. You’re babbling like an airhead and I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

* * *

It occurred to him at that point that perhaps _he_ should stop drinking. He had already been pleasantly squiffy before she showed up and started telling him the most confusing story about why he hated his own birthday. He held out his hand. “Come on. Get it over with. Let’s see this odoriferous cake you’ve inflicted upon me.”

With a gleam in her eye, Hermione placed the cake in his hands and enlarged the box. The mouth-watering aroma of 70% cocoa solids reached his prodigious nose and he inhaled.

“Merlin. That the most delicious-smelling terrible cake I’ve ever encountered.”

* * *

Her eyes flew wide. “You like chocolate? Poppy said … since the war—”

“I hated it during the war. Now I never get any to hate.” He didn’t bother hiding the self-pity in his voice.

Hermione was on it like stink on a dungbomb. “So… you don’t actually hate your birthdays?”

“Only the fact that everyone insists on ignoring them.”

She took the cake from him, and moved in closer. “Perhaps we could celebrate together.”

He pretended to consider. “We could.”

“Followed by cake. Preferably using my body as a plate.”

He completely failed to keep his expression neutral.

* * *

He swiftly pulled her into his arms, and with a voice like cream he purred, “Perhaps that might go some way toward making up for lost time.” Imperiously he added, “But I insist on being fed by hand – afterward.”

She pretended to consider, but couldn’t prevent the grin stealing across her face. “I think that could be arranged. Afterward.”

Moments later, she was beckoning him toward his bed. Severus quaffed his glass of whisky, and as he spotted the chocolate cake, he retrieved it and carried it with him. Following her, he sang under his breath, “Happy birthday to me…”


	87. Silent Sentinel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanksgiving Challenge

The light coming through the bedroom window told him all he needed to know. Snow. Fat, even flakes, blanketing Hogwarts in a silent, white blanket.

Severus turned to his wife, all sleepy and content, and the tenderness within nearly melted his thawing heart for good.

A soft coo sounded in the next room, and he padded into the nursery as silently as the approaching snow.

He would keep them safe; he would keep them warm and sheltered from anyone who might wish to harm them. He was their ward, their raised wand, and grateful for the privilege to be so.


	88. Definition of Ownership

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Collared Challenge 2013

Everyone had always assumed him to be the Dominant one. He had the bearing, the temperament, the frenzied patience for it. He certainly had the voice for it.

Sometimes it surprises him that he is still bowing on his knees before someone who expects his adoration and subjugation. There was a time when he wanted nothing more than release from his servitude.

Until she taught him the gentle power of being loved by the one who owned his heart as well as his soul.

Now the collar feels like adornment; the punishment feels like a kiss. Submission feels like freedom.


	89. Tame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Standing In The Shadows Challenges

* * *

War makes boys into men. What does it make girls? In Granger’s case, it made her aggressive, yearning, empty and insatiable. A year of fear-induced hunger left her hard-eyed, intolerant of others’ mistakes. That’s what had started it all. She had threatened to hex a hapless sixth-year in his Potions class for putting too much beeswort in his Skin Soothing Potion.

“Detention, Miss Granger,” he’d intoned. “Being a war hero does not give you the right to bully others.”

She had swiveled her pitiless eyes on him like the twin barrels of a shotgun. “So who gave you permission, Professor?”

* * *

It was the only thing she seemed to understand. Aggression taming aggressor.

The first time was sheer madness. He hadn’t even _thought_ of his prick since the war, except to wash it. They were standing face to face, calling one another names that sounded long pent up; filthy words, staining the air even as they were lanced from their guts like poison from a wound.

He didn’t remember what she called him. It didn’t matter. The next thing he remembered was slapping her, and the shock and hurt and crippling arousal in her eyes more than matched his own lust.

* * *

 _This is a foolish, stupid mistake_ , he told himself. Each and every close call, each and every time he thought on his many sins and cowardly choices, this one topped them all.

Past calling Lily a Mudblood, past joining the Death Eaters, past surviving the war, past returning to teach, past all the lies and death and destruction he’d caused or experienced—this topped them all.

Perhaps that’s why he did it. Perhaps it was to atone for all the past mistakes. Perhaps this last, latest, most despicable choice would wipe the others clean, when or if he was discovered.

* * *

He grabbed her hair and forced her on her knees and she was scrabbling at his trousers like a dog worrying a bone. Her face was flushed and her eyes were wild and her lips were wet as she freed him, and for a split-second he thought, _don’t touch it!_

And then he was parting her pink lips with it, and his back arched as he fucked her, dragging it in and out of her hot mouth, using his iron grip on her hair. G _ods, Hermione Granger is sucking me off. This is a student…_

He wept as he came.

* * *

The shame of what he’d done to her followed shortly on the heels of his release, and it was no less potent or soporific. He dropped to his knees beside her and forced himself to look at her.

She sat there, gasping, her mouth smeared with his leavings, lips swollen, and he wanted to fuck her again. She stared at him dazedly, and some of the wild, irrational burning left her eyes. She looked the way he no doubt looked; helpless, bewildered and somehow shriven.

“Don’t cry,” she said numbly, and they clung to one another, shivering with new understanding.

* * *

War had left them cowering in the shadow of what had been, with no clear idea of how to move into the sun. They agreed that their method wasn’t strictly orthodox, but each time they fell away from one another, sated and sweating, the shadow receded a little further. They went about things backward, awkward in their learning of one another, but considering who they were, backward seemed to work best.

No one found out about them; they finished that year at Hogwarts. He resigned, and she sat her N.E.W.T.s. One day they disappeared. No one ever saw them again.


	90. Sleeping Beauty

  
He should be draped with flowers. There should be Honour guards, two at his head, two at his feet.  
  
Hermione is his only guard. Everyone else is celebrating, mourning, or running. Not even the Boy-Who-Lived is here to stand his watch over this, their greatest fallen.  
  
Snape lies so still; some bastard has crossed his hands over his chest, like a B-movie vampire. Out of respect, Hermione gently lowers his arms; he is cool, but unresisting. She keeps hoping he’ll open those black, angry eyes and tell her to unhand him, now.  
  
 _Wake up, Professor. Tell me what to do._  
  
~o0o~  
  
Fatigue and grief crush her like a flower between a press, squeezing her dry, preserving his image and these feelings in her heart like an eternal gift.  
  
Death changes him. His face loses more character as the night wanes. His scowl, his frown, his puzzlement, his pain; all loosen, until his expression _isn’t_ anymore. Hermione watches as it changes from the harsh, stern man he was to the bland, blank countenance of an angel. Who is this soft, lovely creature?  
  
How did she ever think this man ugly?  
  
 _Wake up, Severus, so I can tell you how beautiful you were._


	91. Look At Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Look At Me Challenge 2013

_Look at me._

Hermione hears those words in her sleep, every night, as she has for the 1,022 nights she has lived since she heard him whisper his deathwords to her friend.

She wakes from a deep slumber and hears the voice that haunts her. It is close, warm and intimate; a lover’s voice. She can almost feel the rush of his breath against the shell of her ear. She hears it when she dozes, when she daydreams, when she touches herself beneath the sheets of her solitary bed.

She fancies she hears him when she cries herself to sleep.

* * *

 _Look at me._  
It was supposed to be the leg-pull of the war, surviving. Severus thought living anonymously would be bliss. It is boring.

He knows she fears for her sanity, but he can’t help edging closer. He doesn’t know what brought him to her house, watching her sleep. A desire for normality? A perverse pleasure in watching her struggling to adjust?

He came for his own reasons; he stayed because he heard his name on her lips. _She shouldn’t whisper my name in her sleep. She shouldn’t shout it when she comes. I wouldn’t be here if she didn’t._

* * *

_Look at me._

Hermione truly thinks she may be going mad. Severus Snape has become an obsession. Her chest aches each time his name is mentioned, which is often. She fantasises about him, that he is alive and that they are lovers. At night, she imagines he whispers unspeakable things to her, demanding they do these things to and for each other.

She sleeps alone, because his ghost is there. She can smell his cologne, she can almost feel his warmth. When she touches herself, her imagination grows so intense she feels his hands on her body. He is everywhere.

* * *

_Look at me._

He wants to reveal himself, but he is afraid she will scream, run, hex him. He has started touching her while she sleeps or pleasures herself, which she does with alarming regularity. It’s getting hard to control his desire to reveal he’s alive, her shabby pervert ex-professor with a penchant for voyeurism. It’s harder to control his desire for her.

Tonight, he’ll sleep by her side. He’ll hold her close. He’ll soothe and croon to her, touch her, pleasure her. He should leave her alone, but he can’t now. .

Tonight he’ll learn how close is too close.


	92. ...And Carry On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keep Calm Challenge 2013

She shouldn’t be shaking. She shouldn’t be making those whimpering noises, or clinging to his robes like a deckchair from the Titanic.

Severus Snape shouldn’t be kissing her with such hungry, skilled, confident power. He’s the unpleasant one, the socially awkward, devoutly-to-be-avoided one. Hermione is the brightest witch of her age. Everyone says so.

He shouldn’t have the ability to reduce her to this desperate, moaning mess.

Now her brain is on the take-me-I’m-yours setting, while he’s pulling her against what feels like a broom handle. And why is she tearing at his clothing, and why is he letting her?

* * *

He’s been playing her like a cheap violin; he has for months now. All those raised eyebrows, those head tilts, those inviting beds of velvet his voice has made for her libido to sprawl in. And she thought she was seducing _him_.

Severus pushes Hermione roughly against the wall, his hands on her breasts. Her will goes up in flames along with her thighs, and she surrenders to him gladly.

A sound of students approaching down the hall causes him to release his grip. He steps away, but she’s so far gone she actually reaches for the heartless, sadistic snake.

* * *

He’s so calm he hasn’t even broken a sweat; he pulls her hands away and straightens his robes. Hermione takes the biggest gulp of air she can manage. It smells like him, _tastes_ of him, and she nearly swoons.

“Professor Granger.” His smirk makes her face grow hot.

She turns away. “Professor Snape.”

A trembling hand grips her arm. “I trust this conversation will resume later?”

She looks up at him.

His eyes blaze with possessive, fierce desire. There is nothing calm about Severus Snape now.

She smiles. “Perhaps. If you’re a good boy.” She walks slowly away. “Carry on.”


	93. Gifts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whips and Chains Challenge 2013

The chains are jewelry. Necklaces, bracelets, anklets and amulets. They do not capture; they adorn.

Hermione sees them as rewards. They do not hinder or chafe; they tease, they prepare; they present.

Severus has used them all; the crop, the whip, the tawse. On her knees, she gifted him the flogger. Its tickling, biting brushstrokes became his preferred medium. Like the Master she made him, he paints his ownership across her burning flesh.

To hurt? Oh, no. To chastise, to humiliate? Never.

This is how he thanks her for her trust.

Who is actually Master, and who is truly slave?


	94. In The End The Burning Was Very Great

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robes on Fire Challenge 2013
> 
> Yes, I realise that GS100 is where my angst escapes from reform school and goes to beat up all the other genres for lunch money and fags, but if I don’t let it loose on this playground, it will go and infect my other longer fics and steal all their happy ever afters. This was a hard challenge for me; I didn’t know how to deal with it, but Dahlra Muse has been in a moooood today, the cheeky monkey. I own no characters, I didn’t get this beta’d, I haven’t got a clue what happens next. This is all I got.

He knew he was being observed. As the rank stink of charred wool and flesh clung to his robes, the insides of his eyelids, his nostrils, his _soul_ , he kept his face still. There was no need to hide his disgust; even the most hardened Death Eater grimaced at the screaming, burning figure in the middle of their grisly circle.

Bellatrix laughed obscenely. “I told you Mudblood smells like pork! Shall we have a picnic, Severus?”

He looked at her with barely concealed contempt. “Dabbling in cannibalism now, are we?”

“Silence!” The Dark Lord cried. “A little respect, please, Bellatrix.

* * *

“After all,” he added with gleeful sincerity, “the Granger girl was one of Severus’ students. Though not, I believe, a favourite?”

The pitiful shrieks of the dying girl slowly ceased, and Severus nodded. “Not at all, my Lord. A pitiful excuse for a witch, really. Hardly worth the flint to spark her robes.”

The laughter that followed turned his stomach far worse than the stench of the burnt body. The burden of knowing he’d sat by while an innocent girl died a hideous death would have to be shouldered another day. He had seen too much death to falter now.

* * *

“Take Miss Granger back to the home of her parents,” Lord Voldemort commanded. “Harry Potter will soon realise that his defiance carries a high price. And remind Albus that, in spite of his formidable powers, he will not be able to protect the whole of Hogwarts’ Mudblood student body.”

Severus nodded, and gathered the ashes in a small box. Hours later, he was sitting in the Headmaster’s office, his ears once again filled with the sound of screaming. The girl had been their only child, and she had died a senseless, gruesome death. Albus was grave, but he said nothing.

* * *

Only later, after the grieving was silenced and the students returned to their uneasy sleep, did Severus silently enter the dungeons. Pausing at a door warded with his strongest protections, he opened a room unknown even to Dumbledore. Like the Room of Requirement, it was invisible to any detection spells.

He entered the room slowly, and sat down on the bed next to the sleeping girl. She opened her eyes, and he felt a thrill of power at the fear he saw in them. “It is done. A young girl was killed tonight. Burned. Everyone believes it to be you.”

* * *

She looked away, fighting tears. “And now? What happens to me now, Professor?”

His fingers caressed her silken cheek, and he felt another visceral thrill as she pulled away. “I should think that is up to you, Miss Granger.”

“May I leave?”

“You are not a stupid girl. Don’t ask stupid questions.” He sniffed; he could smell smoke on his robes. Wandlessly he vanished them, leaving him clad only in shirt and trousers. “You’re cooperation will be expected, or you will be punished.”

“Professor Dumbledore—”

“Knows everything, and will do nothing.” He smiled. “This is between you and I.”


	95. Mourning Vespers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Graveyard Visit Challenge 2013

* * *

In the hours before dawn, she slipped into the makeshift morgue, and approached his body. Strange that of all the deaths she’d seen, heard or caused, this was the one that hit her the hardest.

He lay so still, where he had always been so restless. So peaceful, when the only time she remembered him even looking pleased was when Slytherin won at Quidditch. Even then it was a grim, satisfied look that read, ‘payback’. Severus Snape had always been one for keeping score.

He looked oddly small. Then again, his presence had always been the largest thing about him.

* * *

“You bastard,” she whispered, and wept. She lay her head down beside his on the marble slab. He was no more indifferent to her dead than when he’d been alive.

She remembered when he had come to them in the Forest of Dean, and she had thought herself so clever, sneaking up on him. In blink of an eye she was on the ground, spitting leaves, and he was on her back, wand poised at her temple. He smelled of woodsmoke and whisky.

“Perhaps the Dark Lord would like to see what I’ve caught for supper,” he rasped, and laughed.

* * *

He deliberately threw as much menace into his voice as possible. Hermione cowered there like a frightened puppy, too afraid to do anything but breathe. She had never been able to stand up to him, had never shown him the temper for which she was justifiably famous. He had always been able to disarm her with a look. The fact that he now sat on her back, his black-clad knees pressed hard against her ribs; the fact that he was actually _touching_ her, made her feel faint.

He rose, pulling her up by her hair. “Get up, Granger,” he commanded.

* * *

He pushed her against a nearby tree, his hand at her throat, and leaned in threateningly. She had never been this close to him before. His eyes were so black they looked unnatural; something in them frightened and stirred her. His mouth drew downward in a sneer that made her heart skip.

“Oh, no you don’t,” he growled, and pushed her so hard against the tree Hermione felt the bark bite into her skin. “The very idea makes me want to vomit.”

“The very idea of what?” she choked out. “What you do—”

“Merlin’s nads, deliver me from Gryffindors.”

* * *

In the morgue, Hermione touched his cold cheek. So cold. He had been heat lightning three nights before, when he fucked her for the first and last time.

Strange how she could spew a thousand yards of hate and viciousness at Lucius Malfoy for standing by while his rabid dog of a sister-in-law tortured her, and yet two days later, when he called, a tiny, silver doe with the soft, innocent face of an angel, announcing, “I have potions to heal you,” she didn’t say a word; she just dumbly followed it.

It never occurred to her to say no.

* * *

She followed his Patronus to a filthy hovel of a house in the North, a place where she was afraid to sit on the furniture for fear of what she’d catch. He seemed almost angry as he tossed the potions and Healing balms into her lap. “I had heard you were… indisposed,” he said accusatorily, as if he suspected he’d been given false information.

She gathered them, and rose from the tatty sofa, and he caught her arm, a sneer twisting his lips. “What’s wrong, Granger? Afraid I might actually touch you?” His inky eyes issued the challenge; she accepted.

* * *

He unceremoniously jerked up the back of her shirt, and smoothed the Healing balm over her aching, twisted back. Tears of equal salts of relief and shame pricked her eyes. His touch had been brusque, all business, until he reached her ribs. Then it eased into a caress, and against her will, she leaned back against him.

She didn’t protest; she didn’t stop him as he slipped his long, warm fingers under her bra, and gave her nipples a tender pluck. His erection, hot and needy, pressed against her back, and he whispered, “Are you still afraid of me, Hermione?”

* * *

“What if I’d said yes?” she asked his still form. “Would you have let me go? Would you have spared me this?” she sobbed, knowing the answer.

Even as he pulled her clothing from her body, she knew she could still stop him. One word, and he would push her away. But she stayed silent, even though she expected him to take her virginity like a cuddly toy won at a funfair, and a second-rate one at that.

Instead he was gentle, and desperate. He kissed her afterward. When she asked, “Why?”

He numbly replied, “Because I’m going to die.”

* * *

She woke in the same place she had been before the silver doe lured her to his bed, and the night could have been put down to a sad, erotic dream, but for the tiny drop of blood on her knickers, and the potions and Healing balm in her pockets.

“Oh, Severus,” she whispered sadly. She was being a silly girl. If he had survived, did she honestly think he would have sought her out, or even acknowledged what happened between them? Would she have been able to survive his scorn, his derision over a moment’s weakness on his part?

* * *

She stood slowly, stiff and aching. She noticed a smear of reddish-brown blood over his eyebrow, and she tried unsuccessfully to wipe it away. Finally she resorted to licking her finger, expunging the stain from his face with her spit and tears, like a doting mother.

A shaft of morning sunlight moved across his body, highlighting the bruising and pooling blood beneath his ashy skin.

Through her waning tears, she whispered, “Severus, it’s Hermione. Please be at peace.” She kissed his cold lips one final time, took a deep breath of morning air, and left him for a new world.


	96. Forget

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amnesia Challenge 2013

“No.”

“But, Severus—”

“No! I won’t.”

“This potion will restore your memory.” Hermione looked at her husband in despair. “Don’t you want to remember?”

He held a copy of Hogwarts: A History in his slender hand, tears streaming down his gaunt cheeks. “Have you read what is written about me? I was hated! I was a murderer! People wanted me dead!”

He wept. “Why would I want to remember that life? Why would I want to restore those memories?”

Hermione took the book from his trembling hands, and kissed him. “Because together, you and I are stronger than history.”


	97. Dungeoness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By The Sea Challenge 2013 - If you are intrepid enough to still be reading, I will tell you this is one of my favourite drabbles.

* * *

_There is a place in Kent called Dungeness. It is a bleak little spit of shingle on the coast, where two dying nuclear power stations lived. It is quiet and dull and harsh, and even on pleasant days, there is something ominous about it, as if Dungeness is holding its breath, waiting for catastrophe to strike._

_Visitors come because it is a curiosity; but once there, they are filled with a sense of urgency to leave, as if the malignant power that pushes the turbines can somehow reach out, and turn living flesh to decay, and joy to helpless sorrow._

* * *

Watching him leave, she supposed that she should feel anger, or disgust. It was strange to feel so bereft, especially when he’d hurt her so much.

“I don’t love you. I don’t have it in me,” he said, repeatedly; usually right at the moment when she was panting beneath him, chasing her climax to fruition.

“I can love for the both of us,” she’d once retorted.

That was a lie. Even the deepest love will wither from neglect. She had tended their relationship too long; it was a garden of roses with thorns dipped in nitroglycerine, volatile in its loveliness.

* * *

She bought a cottage by the sea, at Dungeness, far away from prying eyes. It was rather onomatopoeic; dungeonesque, a prison sitting on the tiny spit of Kent, ostracised from civilised society. No one thought to look for her there. The placed both depressed and comforted her.

She opened the windows and looked out onto her world; Dungeness was drab and colourless, even on sunny days. She wondered if it was the nuclear reactors which had leeched the colour out of the world. If she stayed, would she, too, turn grey and colourless and overlooked? Was that a bad thing?

* * *

And so it was from Dungeness that she first read about his struggles to rejoin the world. She invited him to tea. The first time he visited, she watched him striding toward the cottage, the gunmetal landscape framing him like a portrait. She thought he looked at home.

“This is the creepiest shitehouse in Great Britain,” he said, by way of salutation. “Azkaban-lite. What in Merlin’s name are you doing in Dungeness? And what do you want with me, Granger?”

H glowered at her, cold, bored and uncomfortable, robes billowing in the winter wind. Hermione only wanted one thing: him.

* * *

He stayed long enough to sneer at her proposal, then left. The next day, he returned with ten reasons why their partnership wouldn’t work. The day after, he brought biscuits.

He never Apparated directly into her house. Every day, she would watch him walk the long path to her door. It finally occurred to her that he simply couldn’t resist making an entrance. She forgave him his small vanities; they were too much like her own. The desire to be noticed, admired, to belong somewhere in the world. They became partners; a good team, the reclusive potioneer and his manager.

* * *

It was not easy; nothing ever was with him. He was too used to disappointment to ever fully enjoy even the possibility of happiness. Hermione cursed herself for being such a masochist; most people would have given up on him long before now.

Most people would have never given him the chance, after all he’d done. Sometimes she wondered why _she_ did. Then one day she realised it was because of the rare moments of quiet, possible contentment, the intense softening of his gaze, the increasing regularity of his warm familiar hand on her back as he moved around her.

* * *

The storm battered futilely against the walls of her cottage, and the pewter rain fell on the slates with monotonous insistence. Thunder crashed against the walls, making them shudder. “Gods, what a soulless place,” he muttered, drinking his tea, peering out of the window. “Why don’t you move, Granger? I lose a little more will to live every time I come here.”

She rolled her eyes. “We could always go to Spinner’s End.”

He snorted. “Why? Dungeness is a bouncy castle filled with laughing gas compared to my illustrious abode. If we worked there too, I would assuredly kill myself.”

* * *

“You’ll have deformed babies, you know, living in Dungeness,” he said morosely, apropos of nothing. “This place is a death trap. People who live here get cancers no one’s heard of.”

From him, this was high humour. “Why, Severus, does this mean you care about me?” she teased. “And these imaginary babies you’re so worried about—I suppose you’ll be the father, because no one else comes to see me except for you.”

For the first time since they’d become business partners, he looked frightened. “Don’t ever joke about that,” he hissed, and turned away. “That isn’t fucking funny, Granger.”

* * *

He took her during a storm. One minute they were standing together, watching the rain; the next they were fused together, tearing at clothes and moaning into one another’s mouths in a way that frightened them both. He took her virginity as the lightning split open the sky. She would forever come to associate thunder with her torn hymen; they were soulmates, the product of a force greater than she could ever overcome as he shuddered and whispered profanities in her ear.

As time passed, she taught him how to please her, but not that first time, nor the second.

* * *

He never apologised; she knew he never would. He didn’t know how. He only knew to flee when frightened, like a wild animal. Which was what he did, when he realised he was in love with her.

“I don’t love you. I don’t have it in me.”

She cried when he left. She closed the shutters so she wouldn’t have to look at the path he strode, or the rain he’d watched, or the power station he’d vilified. She turned inward and let Dungeness be, trying to learn to live without him.

One day he would return. Just not now.


	98. Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time In A Bottle Challenge 2013

They are old now, as fragile as spun glass. To the world, they’re called legends, which makes Severus scoff and Hermione laugh. To friends and family, they are like living works of art—the art of daily magic.

They are living, breathing monuments to the Golden Age of the Wizarding world. So they say.

But when alone, she places her tiny hand in his, and they remember: a time when they were young, and powerful, and understood how fragile the world was, and how they had saved and mended it with daily magic.

They are spun glass, delicate and eternal.


	99. Pressed Roses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flower Challenge 2013

_She is too young_ , he tells himself. _Too young, too brash, too irritating, too Gryffindor, too pretty… So young,_ too _young._

 _It’s no good_ , he thinks, as he covetously watches Granger, brimming with girlish pride and hope and so damn _young_ , walking down the stairs on the arm of that oaf, Krum. But there is too much on his mind, too many variables of self-loathing to consider.

And so the same wish he makes every single second, every single minute of every hour, every day wears another groove into his mind.

 _I wish I was someone other than Severus Snape._  
~~~~~

The night has been one gruesome reminder why he makes this wish. Severus is a black, ugly crow skulking in the shadows while a host of butterflies and hummingbirds rush and duck and hum around him.

He is silent.

And he hates the way the bloom of hope fades from her cheeks, her keen intelligent face falling with burst hope and fresh humiliation, and he aches within as if her pain is rotting something inside him as well.

Hermione grows drab and plain and scholarly again, in the final hours of this farce of a Yule Ball.

So damn young.

~~~~

Their eyes meet in the snowy garden, where rosebushes and recalcitrant couples have been blasted from their hiding places, scattered and skittering like mice over the frozen ground. Once again, Severus is the purveyor of meaningless carnage and impotent rage, and it’s all he thinks he’s probably ever going to be capable of.

Hermione has tear tracks on her face, and looks disheveled and embarrassed to be seen this way.

So is he.

Defeated, she passes by, and drops a rose at his feet. It looks like blood pooling on the hem of his robes.

“Happy Christmas, sir,” she whispers.

~~~~

Years later, volunteering to help empty Snape’s rooms of his personal effects, Hermione finds his journal, written in baffling code. Tucked in its pages is a photograph of her, wearing her first formal, grown-up ball robes, looking pretty for the first time in her life.

Lying with it is the rose, as lovingly preserved as her memory of that night, when she first saw him, woman to man. She cries as if her heart will break.

Glancing around, she slips the journal into her robes and continues, swiping away tears as she packs the remnants of him into a box.  
~~~~~  
 _“Too young. You are too young, and intelligent and caring. I’m everything in the world you are not. And yet, tonight, I would have given the moon to be Viktor Krum, holding you, being good enough for the likes of you. You, who are everything_ He _hates, everything_ He _wants to destroy, and yet, everything I could ever want, if the likes of me could be worthy of dreams of happiness._  
 _“Why do you haunt me, little witch? Because you are so much like_ her _? Clever and brave, and so fresh and full of light? Why are you so young?”_

 _~~~~_  
Reading the words of this dead wizard, Hermione tenderly touches the rose. The Portkey sends her screaming through time and space, landing hard on a dusty floor. She hauls herself to her feet, looking up into the pale, sallow face, the dark, fathomless eyes, the man who wrote and dreamed and longed, just like her.

He looks marginally less shocked than she feels, but that’s because he’s still weak from the battle and his own notoriety. Nevertheless, he smiles.

“I knew you would come, Miss Granger,” he whispers hoarsely. “You were always too clever.” He looks away. “And too young.”  
~~~~  
When she takes his hand, and cups his cheek, he shivers and whispers, “And I’m too old.”

“You’re alive. I’d say that makes you just right,” she whispers, and he sags against her from exhaustion and relief. “Oh, gods, you’re alive,” she weeps, and he feels her tears dampen the healing wound.

“This isn’t a romance novel, Hermione. I am—”

“Alive. You _know_ me, S—Severus.” She stumbles over his name, then repeats it with confidence. “You are the only person on earth who has ever tried.”

His blackened soul, given hope. New roses, budding from the old ashes.


	100. Someone Else

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone Else Challenge 2013

They made a strange but solid couple, it was said.

Tall, angular, stringent, swotty, awkward.

And those were the compliments.

They were not one another’s first love, but they were their last. For years they were a solid front; twin columns of powerful, magical unity. They lived only for one another. Severus and Hermione.

Until someone else came along.

He captivated Hermione; Severus was jealous, but accepting.

Until someone _else_ came along.

She bewitched Severus; Hermione thought he was too indulgent.

Husband, wife, son and daughter. A proper family.

Someones come and go; true families like theirs will last forever.


	101. Signs of Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snape's Birthday Challenge 2013

_Shhh…._

He sees darkness.

He sees black corners and grey staircases; mists that drag at his cloak like a begging child, and he thinks to himself, _is this death? Is this the hell to which I’ve resigned myself?_

Tastes in his mouth like slick ash, and he wants to retch and he feels the tearing, searing pain of fighting. Fighting for a life he had all but given up on, but now seems as important as it was always meant to be in the first place.

He has to save it; it’s the only one he has, and it’s precious.

~~~~~  
At first, he hears strange, distorted sounds, like voices in a well, and he wishes they would just _be quiet!_ for one moment so he can think straight, but thinking straight has ceased to be a valuable commodity. The sounds are like music being played underwater, and they are in turn welcoming and frightening, and he can’t tell the difference or why he should care.

All that matters is that, while he can still hear them, it means that he is still alive.

_Don’t let me die, please._

“You won’t,” says a voice. And he weeps, afraid to believe it.

~~~~~

When he was ten, Lily made him a daisy chain, and he wore it around his neck until it fell apart. He hid it from Ma and Da; her because she would make him take it off, and him because he would tear it off. He hides his fear from The Voice, in case it tells him that he needs to accept he’s dying.

He wore the daisies until they shed all over his pillow. He still hid them.

_I’m afraid._

“Shh. It’s okay. You’re not alone.”

He is afraid when the chain disintegrates, his fading body will join it.

~~~~~

On that last day, he buttoned up his coat slowly, chanting under his breath every defensive spell he’d ever known. The buttonholes were narrow, clogged with protection; his clothing was stiff with it. Blood ran off his shirt like water off a duck’s back; it was still white when they found him.

_Am I alive?_

“And you will be for a very long time. Open your eyes.”

The soft touch of a hand on his face makes him shudder. A voice, a scent of pears, a cool sip of water, a shadowy face full of care floats in his vision.

~~~~~

His days are quiet; he has learned to stare at one singular curl for hours and has found the answers to the cosmos within its cuticles. There is a price for tranquility, but he paid it long ago. Now, he is content to breathe and see and feel peace.

His companion is as quiet as she once was vociferous; she says it’s unseemly to talk when he’s determined to remain silent. Sometimes she writes messages on his palm, using the tip of her finger. He shivers at the contact. _If you’ll start talking again_ , she says, _I’ll stop tickling you_.

~~~~~

Days go by; he speaks like a rusted hinge, but it _is_ sound vibrated through vocal chords. To her it is music of the angels. She stops writing her love letters on his palm, and writes them instead on his heart.

She has aged; he stayed surprisingly young.

“Do you love me?” she asks. He writes _yes_ on her palm with his finger.

“Why don’t you say it out loud?”

“I’m afraid someone will find my daisy chain.”

She writes _OK_ on his palm. “If I stopped tickling you, would you stop loving me?”

 _No_ , he writes. “Never,” he says.

~~~~~  
 _Shh_ , he whispers to his child. _Mummy’s napping_.

Writes _You have a new brother_ on her palm.

 _Shh_ , he whispers to his daughter. _He wasn’t good enough for you._

Writes _don’t cry_ on her palm.

 _Shh_ , he whispers to his son. _Don’t let your mother find out_.

Writes _Prat_ on his palm.

 _Shh_ , he whispers to his wife. _We had to let her go someday_.

Writes _She’s a beautiful bride_ on her palm.

 _Shh_ , he whispers to his love. _Just a little separation._

Writes _I love you_ on her palm.

Writes it over and over, until his finger stops moving.


	102. God of the Hearth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fireside Challenge 2012

She has heard all the clichés.

 _He is so cold,_ they say. _He must chill her blood._

Hermione scoffs, too pragmatic for these foolish notions. “He’s the same temperature as any healthy wizard,” she says, rolling her eyes at these tactless, even pointless observations.

_His heart is black ice. He is emotionally frozen._

Those were the warnings, from friends, colleagues, and family.

_He can turn you to ice with a look. He’s too cold-blooded for a hot-blooded lioness._

All well-meaning, genuine and so patronising Hermione has long ago stopped listening.

Severus says it doesn’t bother him, but it actually does.

~~~~~

When Celestina Warbeck sings about a cauldron of hot, strong love, Hermione blushes. He would be mortified to know she hums it under her breath when alone.

She knows with Severus it’s all smoke and mirrors; he pretends to not care because they think he’s too cool to care. _Give them the story they think is real, and they’ll leave us alone_ , he says.

That means she can have him all to herself. She shares his heat with no one; she’s jealous of the clothes he wears, that they can lay against his warm flesh and be warmed in return.

~~~~~

Together, they are flint and spark; apart, Hermione shivers. It was her heart that was encased in ice; her feelings frozen in amber. They perpetuate the myth, because the truth is too incendiary.

Severus is the hearth that she returns to at the end of the day; he always welcomes her warmly. He is comfort and concentration and scholarship and industry, the things that are familiar and grounded. She understands him, and he has revealed himself as the man he always wanted to be.

His old life was purged, and this new life holds only pleasant mysteries for them both.

~~~~~

But when he burns, oh, when he burns… there is nothing more perfect than the heat of hope and nothing more elemental than his complex, intricate passion. Lying in his arms, purified and scalded by his intensity, Hermione wonders how Severus could ever be thought to be cold.

His magic, his desire, his lust, his sex; they are what make him crackle with possibilities, and when he takes her, there is nothing hidden from him. He demands her best, he craves her adoration, he commands her pleasure. And when the embers fade, she looks into his eyes, and sees home.


	103. Extremeties

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Comfort and Joy Challenge 2012

He starts with the extremities; given his personality and temperament, no surprise there. Nor is the thoroughness and scholarship he brings to the task. The concentration of application is so engrossing, for a moment Snape seems to forget Hermione is at the other end of the appendages he attends with his characteristic, abrasive intensity.

“Better?” he asks irritably. He will not be pleased if his efforts are found less than satisfactory.

She nods. He holds on seconds longer than necessary before withdrawing. She seizes the perfect opportunity.

“My turn.” She smiles, captures his cold hands, and warms them with hers.


	104. Frostfyre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coldest Winter Challenge 2012

There is a lover’s moon shining over a silvery pond in a quiet forest. It is an altar, sacred and silent. Standing alone, watching snow fall silent and blameless on the frozen surface, Hermione wonders if she will ever feel warm again.

She also wonders if anyone will ever love her with such tumbling, trembling, helpless, hopeless devotion as Severus Snape felt for Lily.

On a cold December night, he knelt by this spot, and sank his last, sharpest tribute to his lost love into the black water.

In her resigned and jealous heart, Hermione knows the answer is no.

* * *

She envies Snape; at least he knew what drove him. Ten years after she watched the light die from his eyes, Hermione remains unsure of this simple fact about herself.

Is passion worth the heartache it may bring? Should she lock her heart away, as he locked the sword in the water – like Nimue captured Merlin in the tree?

She wishes she could have locked him away; kept him safe, fed off his knowledge and passion. If she could only understand him, perhaps she might solve the mystery of her own ridiculous obsession with a man she never really knew.


	105. Well, You Will Do These Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hidden Evil Challenge 2012

“I’d be careful if I were you,” Hermione added, walking out of the room.

“I hardly think caution necessary at this juncture,” Severus replied. She could hear the sneer in his voice.

“Suit yourself,” she muttered to herself, and propped up her feet and cracked open her book.

Moments later, she heard her husband’s voice, harsh with alarm. “Merlin’s bumfluff, Hermione! Get in here now! I need your help.”

Hermione sighed. He’d volunteered for the job, insisting he could take care of the problem himself, despite her warnings. She told him what to expect.

He had only himself to blame.

* * *

She put down her book and strolled into the small room that had until recently been their potions lab, and stifled a laugh.

“It’s not amusing in any way!” Severus hissed, as he Incendio’d the offending object. His prodigious nose was wrinkled in utmost disgust.

“I did warn you,” Hermione said reproachfully.

“Not vigorously enough,” he retorted. They looked down at the table, where their infant daughter cooed and gurgled.

“What have you been feeding her?” he demanded. “Voldemort’s toe jam?”

Hermione plucked a fresh nappie from the pile. “It’s baby pooh. Occupational hazard.”

“Hidden evil, more like,” he grumbled.


	106. Say What You See

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dementors Challenge 2012

In the Autumn of 2012, Hermione Weasley became plain old Hermione Granger again. It was an amicable decision to part company with her husband, even though he privately told friends and family he worried for her. Custody of their children was granted to Ron, and Hermione could see them whenever she wanted.

She moved into a small cottage in Hogsmeade, to be close to her kids and her new job at Hogwarts, but the moment school began, Hermione became convinced she was losing her mind.

The first night she arrived, Severus Snape accosted her. Difficult, seeing as he was dead.

“Those cauldrons won’t last the term,” a wry, dry, oh-so-familiar voice intoned, as she prepared for her first lesson. The silvery, transluscent figure moved toward her, his gliding approach no more graceful or silent than in life. She glanced up and dropped the afore-mentioned cauldrons.

“Professor Snape! It-it’s wonderful to see you, sir,” Hermione exclaimed, and with all her heart she meant it.

He crossed his arms imperiously, rolled his eyes, and disappeared.

She dismissed his ghostly form as a trick, a fume-induced hallucination, and set about working on lesson plans and ways to include herself in her children’s lives.

“I’m real, you know.” A low whisper drifted across her skin like a caress. Hermione stirred in her sleep as Snape’s voice rolled over her like distant thunder. “You were remorseful. I can appreciate that. In fact, I find, Miss Granger, that with hindsight being twenty-twenty, I can appreciate much about you.”

A low soft chuckle made her shiver in her sleep. “Replace your gurdyroots. They have a fungal rot that will cause potentially lethal fumes.”

Another whisper-caress floated over her face, and Hermione tossed feverishly, feeling hot and cold. “Replace your gurdyroots, and I will reward you, Miss Granger.”

It took someone with experience to detect such dangerous fungi, and Hermione knew she wouldn’t have checked otherwise. The roots were indeed rotten, and throughout that day, she teetered between two emotions. Either way, she had avoided disaster. She was relieved that her unconscious mind projected her former professor’s imagery onto her dreams, and urged her to check. Alternately, Severus Snape had warned her from beyond the grave.

If that was the case, death must have mellowed him. He never rewarded her for anything in life. It sounded vaguely sexual; she blushed as she realised she was hoping it was.

For two nights she stayed up, waiting for Snape. Her reward was a headache and a feeling of guilt that she’d been cross with her first years and too tired to help Rose with her homework.

“You’ve grown into quite a lovely woman, Miss Granger,” he said, three nights later. “I can’t help but think this is all for my benefit.”

In her partially awake state, Hermione looked up and saw him. He looked corporeal, warmly alive, gazing down at her sheer silk nightgown in genuine male appreciation. “I wish you could… professor…” she began, her voice slurry with sleep.

A hand, real and insistent with pressure, touched her face. “Please, call me Hermione,” she pleaded, arching into the touch.

Snape leaned in, and kissed her. Everything she knew about him and more about herself was contained in that kiss. It had questions and answers hidden in the curve of his lips. It contained his flavour, the essence of his voice, his scent, his intelligence, and most of all, his powerful magical presence. Hermione opened to him; his magic sizzled over her naked, eager flesh. It was the most erotic moment of her life.

“Claim your reward, Hermione,” he whispered.

Casual enquiries revealed no one else ever saw him, though his posthumous tributes were throughout the castle. Hermione couldn’t walk down a hall without tripping over some plaque or painting in his honour.

She grew thin, preoccupied, close-mouthed and sharp. She wore black; she called her students ‘dunderheads.’ Minerva grew worried; where was the bright, energetic young mother whom the students had adored?

“I’m taking too much,” Severus said, while lying at her side one midnight. He was luminously pale; his troubled eyes glowed like hematites. “I need to find balance, or I you will be lost, as will I.”

He was her secret; Hermione never told anyone that Severus Snape was a ghost. Rose and Hugo always believed their mother wasted away from some Muggle-carried malaise.

He became her lightning, a jagged, pale, luminescent burst of energy striking at the heart of her, giving pleasure and absolution, taking more of her with him each time. He apologised, of course. He had never meant to harm her, but all that intelligent, potent magical energy was too sweet and alive to resist. He found the balance, even as he drained her dry with his kiss, creating his eternal companion in return.


	107. The Why Is Less Important Than The How

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corridor of Power Challenge 2012

Sometimes in long, dull faculty meetings, she looks up. He stares at her as if she is the coldest pint in the most barren desert. She’s thirsty by the time the meetings are over. He never lingers afterward, but flees as if from a demon of his choosing.

At first, Hermione was afraid to follow him. He intimidated her less when she was his gawky, buck-toothed student. Hero he may be, but Severus Snape still had the ability to make her feel like a first year. She was young then, and thought she knew him.

She still doesn’t know him.

Tonight his heated gaze has left her parched, groggy, silently cursing him for his prickly, grudging civility. These are the times she wishes for the return of his temper; his thunder, his lightning. Only then does she stand a chance for any relief from this crackling, dry tension between them.

“Goodnight, Severus,” she calls, an attempt to press hot against cold, fire against moisture. Her lips are dry; it is because he leaves her this way, on edge and longing, and with the sudden, uncomfortable feeling that he knows, and either doesn’t care, or enjoys seeing Know-it-all Hermione Granger suffer.

They clash like a summer storm in a forgotten corridor, mouths fused together. His kisses are suffocating and greedily inexperienced compared to hers, and her body melts against his as he learns her. Lightning flashes, and thunder rolls through the sky, the castle, through her, and she isn’t sure if it is Nature or Severus who has summoned it.

“Don’t kiss me unless you mean it,” he growls in her mouth, tasting of wine and insecurity, and takes Hermione against a wall, fucking her hard, like a whore, daring her to want him. She drinks him in like essential water.

There are times when he seems feverish and agitated; those are the times when she is in control. Other times he is cool, assuaging her hunger– he is the Master then. Hermione knows that when she finds him in the corridor they have come to think of as ‘theirs’, she will know which Severus is waiting by judging the amount of colour beneath his cut-glass cheekbones.

That he kneels like a supplicant, or orders her on her knees like a slave is, in the cold light of day, less important than the lightning they conjure, or the thirst they quench.


	108. Copper, Gold, Bronze and Silver

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is something that was given while listening to haunting, beautiful American Indian flute music by R. Carlos Nakai.
> 
> DMuse is in this kind of mood. He loves writing drabbles like this. I just picked a couple of challenges this might or might not fit under. Not really a co-joined story; more a series of observances.

He observes. He pays attention. He knows. He comes to her like snow falling on winter grass; silent, enveloping, still. She is the only desperate peace he can find.

Poets inspire, and bards sing of romance. The only songs they know are discordant and martial, sung beneath rough blankets and soft skin. They sing of ‘when’. Sometimes Hermione thinks that life is so beautiful her heart will burst with it. And sometimes, when she forces herself to walk away from him again, she wonders how she will survive to an old age if Severus, if love, doesn’t survive with her.

The last time Hermione saw him alone was in Autumn, and his embrace smelled of woodsmoke and heavy metals. She had given him three maple leaves; copper, gold, and bronze. It was a foolish, childish version of a romantic gesture.

“What in Merlin’s name am I supposed do with these?” he scoffed, and tucked them into his robes. She found them in a well-read book when she packed his things. She held each one in turn, and cried herself ill, picturing them in the palm of Severus’ large hand. She told herself he treasured them, but she was never sure.

The last time she saw Severus alive, he was already looking past her down that dark unknown road. She asked for something to remember him by; she received a disdainful look for her troubles. He kissed her goodbye.

Hermione closed his coffin, and wondered how she was supposed to bury her heart.

She sat in his house, and tried so hard to feel him. There was nothing left of him; he had moved on, and she tried to be glad for him, but it was too hard to be that selfless. Severus had taken too much of her with him.

The night sky is his cloak; the North Star his top collar button.

She fluttered like a moth around a candle that danced through its last, sputtering moments. Did it burn brighter because he drew her into it? Did Severus burn faster because he knew that the best things are the things you don’t deserve to live for? In the end, there was nothing left but might-have-beens, I-wishes, and why-couldn’t-we’s.

Hermione shivers in the cold October twilight, and wonders why the world is still beautiful without him. She yearns for the candle’s glow, and wishes on his top collar button.


	109. Must We Always Resort To Violence?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I Dare You Challenge 2012

Severus’ hands were trembling as he opened the gate.

His plan was simple. He would arrive unannounced, knock on the door, and she would open it to find him standing there, looking imposing, dignified and completely, knicker-wettingly irresistible.

He had planned so carefully, using all the powers of his meticulous, logical brain, and the scenario would play itself out perfectly, just as it had in theory.

He had, of course, forgotten Hermione’s penchant for throwing a spanner in the works, and his own tendency to overthink tactics until they were too mushy and pappy from handling as to be almost unusable.

* * *

Instead of following his meticulous plan, Hermione was bent over in the garden, presenting her delicious backside like every peach he’d wanted to devour.

The gate creaked, and she whirled around, wand in hand, and hexed the living shit out of him.

He jumped back, hissing. “What was THAT for?” he barked, flinching at his stinging wrist.

She raced toward him, a harridan in Muggle jeans and his cast-off The Damned t-shirt. “For sneaking around like the snake in the grass you are, Severus!” she bit back, amber eyes flashing.

Severus glowered. She fumed. “Are you hurt?” she grudgingly asked.

* * *

“Not really,” he answered with a pout.

The silence was not part of the plan.

“I’m waiting,” he said, dragging his dignity across his chest, along with his robes.

Hermione rolled her eyes. “You’re the only wizard I know who can manage to fall in a bucket of roses and come up smelling like a bouquet of shit, Severus. You. Screwed. Up.”

“I’m giving you the chance to apologise.”

It was fascinating, really. One moment, she was Hermione Granger, all luscious curves and fuckable lips. The next instant she was a Gorgon – Medusa with Slythern-snake hair and bolshy, breast-heaving anger.

* * *

Her eyebrows rushed together; her hair crackled at the ends. Her face, pink from the sun, bloomed into a dark flush of fury. “Of all the mad, idiotic things you have ever said, and grant their haven’t been that many, what gives you the first idea that I will apologise about anything?” Hermione screeched, and kicked him in the shin.

That hadn’t been in the plan, either. Cradling his injured arm, clutching his bruised leg, Severus hissed, “If you will allow me to explain-”

“I want you to explain why you should leave here with your bits intact, Severus Snape!”

* * *

They faced one another, witch and wizard, male and female, Gyffindor and Slytherin. He coughed. She cleared her throat.

He blinked. Twice. His mouth twitched.

“I dare you.”

Hermione started. “Pardon?”

Severus took a bracing breath. “Forgive me. I dare you.”

“No.”

“I double dare you.”

Her mouth twitched. “I am busy, Mr. Snape,” she intoned, with impressive dignity.

“Triple. Dare. You.”

“Prat.”

Neither moved.

Severus growled, “You cannot possibly be as aroused as I am at this moment, you delectable succubus.”

“Bet me, Snake boy,” Hermione replied, panting.

He threw her over his shoulder, and marched into their home.


	110. No Mercy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Interogation Challenge 2012

He showed the girl neither mercy nor pity. Years of training, honing his skills as both spy and Slytherin had purged any dregs of leniency. She, in turn, raised flashing, bloody Gryffindor eyes to his. Her foolish, impotent defiance was written clearly on her face.

“Well? I’m waiting,” he drawled. Stubborn silence. Gods, she could be the most belligerent, pig-headed- “I am prepared to do this the simple way. However, should you refuse,” he added, allowing his shark’s teeth grin to turn his expression predatory, “I have other, more intrusive ways of discovering the truth. Ways that are most unpleasant.”

* * *

For a bleak, satisfying moment, her insolence dropped and the first vestiges of apprehension appeared. Then the defiance returned stronger than ever. “You wouldn’t.”

The surprised righteousness in her voice made his jackal smile wider. “Bet me.”  
For a long moment they played a dangerous game of chicken, each willing the other to look away first, but he was confident of his own skills. She was not. Finally, the resolve crumbled, leaving only her open, naked confession. She looked away, her eyes blinking rapidly.

He rushed to bring his shields into place. “Don’t you dare-“ but it was too late.

* * *

Amber orbs met obsidian. The tiny lower lip wobbled ominously. “I tried to change him back!” she mumbled. A single fat tear rolled down her cheek. She threw her arms around his neck, pressing her tiny face to his. “I’m sorry.”

Severus looked past the black, curly head of his daughter. Hermione was biting her lip, fighting laughter. He sighed. Merlin, if they’d had her ten years before, they wouldn’t have needed Harry Potter. She could have single-handedly taken out every Death Eater with one bat of those enormous, expressive eyes. They would have caved like Hufflepuffs – like her father.

* * *

Severus took careful aim, and said, “ _Reparo._ ” The vividly blue Crookshanks returned to his normal ginger colour. The old furball stalked away, his dignity restored. Severus turned to his daughter threateningly. “Now promise you will leave your brother’s wand alone! Your mother was most upset with you,” he finished lamely, wishing Hermione would stop giggling behind her hand.

His daughter gave him a tremulous smile. His heart melted, as it always did; as she knew it would. She’d been playing him since she was in nappies. No mercy.

She kissed his sallow cheek, looking up at him adoringly. “Yes, Dad.”


	111. Good Year for Roses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roses Challenge 2012

The first night she knew, she was fifteen, angry, hurt and humiliated.

It had all started so well. She had gone to the Yule Ball with Viktor Krum, and in her secret heart, the one she kept from everyone – the boys, her professors, even her parents, she wanted to be noticed for something other than her cleverness and academic achievements.

That night she looked in the mirror, and for the first time she liked what she saw – the soft swell of breast against a silk bodice, the tumble of ringlets, the tint of gloss on her oft-chewed bottom lip.

* * *

She had laughed silently at the gawking, confused looks. She was not laughing later at the nasty comments made in earshot, and the patronising looks. They were making fun of her. _Oh, look at the bookworm, trying to be flash – how sad is that?_

She could have borne it all, had her own best friends not betrayed her – had Ron not accused her of camp-following in the worse, most traitorous way.

She had stumbled onto the grounds for fresh air and solitude. She might as well have attended the ball in her school robes with ink-stained fingers and messy hair.

* * *

So much for change.

The noise alerted her, a sharp, blasting sound that was oddly satisfying. Someone was hitting something, and she wished for a moment she could join them. She would’ve liked to have taken out her anger on something – or someone.

The sound grew closer, and she tried to steal away, before anyone found her and derided her further. _Oh, poor Hermione, all alone – what’s the matter, did Viktor want to dance with a real girl?_

She walked right into the blast, and the livid, pale face of Professor Snape. Hermione looked down at her feet. A rose.

* * *

She met his furious, dark eyes and her throat went dry. She knew she needed to explain herself – she was not supposed to be there, and judging from his expression, he was well aware of it.

She looked back at the rose. It was deep red, the colour of spilt blood; it had been neatly sliced from its stem. Without thinking, she knelt down and picked it up. It looked as fragile and vulnerable as a newborn in her hand.

Looking up at her professor, she said the only words that she could manage. “I-I think you dropped this, sir.”

* * *

He looked at her then; truly, as if he’d never really seen her before that moment. His eyes swept over her, without any hint of judgement or appraisal. His face was as solemn as she had ever seen it, but in that moment, the anger and bitterness, his constant companions, bled away. He was a man, looking at a young woman, and something like regret flitted across his face.

“And what would I want with a rose, Miss Granger?” His voice was soft, almost unbidden, as if he’d spoken against his will.

“May I keep it, then?” She blurted impulsively.

* * *

Something like his old, familiar sneer crept back into his expression, as if it had wondered away and realised it had been missed. “Again, Miss Granger, what has it to do with me?”

Hermione looked down at the rose. “I love roses,” she said, “but I don’t want to take what isn’t mine.” She smiled sadly. “I’ve come to realise there’s a lot of things in life one might want, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get it.”

He looked surprised. “It is a hard fact of life, Miss Granger. We can’t always have what we want. Sometimes we never do.”

* * *

He looked at the rose again, and looked down at the ground. “The roses were never mine. I… I do not care for flowers.”

When she didn’t move, he rolled his eyes. “Keep it if you wish. It is nothing to me.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, and for some reason she knew she was going to cry. Not because he’d said or done anything cruel, but because, in his own way, he’d been kind. _We can’t always have what we want. Sometimes we never do._

She returned to her room, took off her pretty dress, and went to bed.

* * *

Years later, she stood in almost the same spot, with a bouquet of red roses, and laid them at the base of a monument with his name on it. She brushed the snow from the carving, and cleared away all the dead leaves and winter muck.

She arranged the flowers prettily, and sat back on her haunches. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come earlier,” she murmured. “It’s been an absolutely mad year. Well, I suppose you know that,” she said, with a laugh. “I always think you’re watching, although why on earth you would care what I did, I’ll never know.”

* * *

She touched his name: _Severus T. Snape_. “I wish I could have known you better. You see, I have a little more hands-on knowledge about being alone. Since Ron left and the kids are in school, I’m lonely.” She gave another shaky laugh. “And I apparently talk to gravestones.”

She sighed. “You know what I regret, Professor?” She shook her head. “Of course you don’t. And you wouldn’t care regardless, but I really wish I could have been your friend. Gods, I’m glad you can’t hear me! You’d hex me into Neverland for that!”

She choked back a sudden sob.

* * *

“What am I saying, ‘I’m glad you can’t hear me’? I’d take all the abuse you were willing to give, if you were still alive.” Tears fell down her cheeks. “We can’t get what we want, can we, Professor? You couldn’t, so why should I be surprised to be any different? I just wish for once, both of us could have gotten what we wanted.”

She got to her feet. “At least you gave me the chance to live long enough to find out what I did and didn’t want. Strange that, in the end, all I wanted was you.”

* * *

He watched her leave with silent, dark, yearning eyes. She puzzled him, coming here, season after season, talking like they were old friends. He listened the first time out of morbid curiosity. Now he eagerly hung on to every word. He missed her when she didn’t come.

 _The next time_ , he promised. _The next time she comes, I’ll tell her. I’ll do what I’ve promised myself I’d do the last three times_.

He turned around, and walked away, a lonely pale figure. Standing out against his unrelieved black cloak was a vivid, blood red rose, cradled tenderly in his hands.


	112. Feet of Clay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Foot Fetish Challenge

It is one of the many things she loves about him. He sneers at her fascination with them. Long, thin, elegant. All the words in her unlimited vocabulary that encompasses him. They lie together, after love, top to tail, just so she can stroke his feet.

They look like alabaster or marble, opalescent with blue veins. Long slender toes, perfect nails. The gods were not kind to him in some ways, but they have surely blessed him in other places no less important. His voice, like honey and thunder, his cock, graceful like a sword, and his pale, naked feet.

* * *

He is moody, perverse and contrary, giving with one hand, taking with the other; the consummate Slytherin. On good days, he allows her to stroke and rub his feet with oils and unguents. He tells her he walks miles every day in the castle; his soles are as proudly hard as dragon hide. He could probably walk across hot coals and not feel it.

On bad days he intercepts her in the halls, pretending at detentions for ludicrous infractions, commanding she kneel before him and kiss his feet. His heavy cock is waiting for her; his demands are always met.

* * *

She bathed his feet with her tears, cleaning them; it was her duty.

Even years later, she continues to put his nail clippings in the Polyjuice, and the wizard she chose long ago because he sounded a little like him still drinks it; part of the fee she pays for his services.

When he changes and orders her to kneel, she kisses those long, slender elegant feet, feeling wretched and empty and starved. They lie together, top to tail. He uses all his considerable talents to comfort her, while she weeps and tenderly strokes the feet of a dead man.


	113. Language, Apprentice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leather Challenge 2012

“I can read you like a book, you know.”

She smiled. “Really?”

He glowered at her, but the dark eyes told a slightly different story than the scowl. “You’re looking at me in a distinctly salacious way, Apprentice Granger.”

Hermione stretched contentedly. “I was merely thinking about the new metaphor I have for you.”

He rolled his eyes and looked away. That meant he was pleased. Aside from teaching Hermione the subtle art and exact science that was Potion Making, Master Snape also gave lessons in the even more subtle art of his body language.

Hermione was a fast learner.

* * *

His gaze returned to hers. Those obsidian eyes of his were banked fires, always on the verge of conflagration. “Well, let’s see. On occasion, you have thus far compared me to-” He ticked them off with his long, slender fingers. “Red wine, a panther, silk, an eel…” He paused, giving her a narrow-eyed look that was Snape braille for ‘thank you’. “And chocolate.

“Now,” he said, drawing his cloak around him like wings, the wordless code that indicated equal parts anticipation and insecurity. “What new food item or animal am I this week?”

She met his liquid, dark eyes. “Leather.”

* * *

The eyebrows rose faster than he’d planned. She had truly flattered him. He hummed in deference to her choice. “Interesting. And what form do I take as leather?”

She pondered. “Buttery soft, when properly cared for; a nap that can either chafe or soothe, depending on which way you’re rubbed. An irresistible scent: warm, animal, male, with a hint of green; smooth and rough in all the right places.”

He tilted his head to the left. This shorthand had been easy to suss out; right was for berating, left was for flirting. “You _have_ been giving it some thought, Apprentice.”

* * *

Hermione could barely contain her glee. He’d called her ‘Apprentice’ twice in one conversation. Feeling a little aggressive, then. She liked him that way.

He continued, “And how are these attributes manifested, hmm? Am I a sofa cushion?”

She tried that on for size. “Cool to the touch, until properly warmed, then soft to lie on.”

He smirked. He had four separate smirks alone. That one went with the tilt to the left.

“Perhaps a garment of some sort?”

“While the idea of you in leather trousers is intriguing, I’d sooner lace you up with your own skin. More supple.”

* * *

He blinked at her. The slower the blink, the more aroused he was. When it was done, his eyes were heavy-lidded and slid over her like silk. “Then it must be… a flail.”

_Professor Snape, in leather trousers, lounging on a leather sofa, holding a leather whip. Now_ there’s _a cocktail for lust if ever there was one._

Her voice was husky. “Like all good metaphors, sir, you are quite adaptive.”

He was as still as a statue. “Your observations may have merit, Hermione. Perhaps we can test the resiliency of this metaphor.” He gestured toward his chambers. “Shall we?”

* * *

Not only had she needed to learn the language, but the inflections and the timbre of the instrument that spoke it. That, combined with the head tilt, the smirk and the crossed arms spelled out a definite message. It was as subtle as a hippogriff. It translated into dark nights, and darker whispers, the warm scent of leather, the rich taste of wine and chocolate; the animal within coaxed out, then unleashed.

It was a language neither of them had yet perfected, but like all good scholars, they planned on researching until both reached the highest level of core competency.


	114. By Our Fascinations Are We Known

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leather Challenge

The whip was made of black leather; tooled with metal studs. Its dozen straps were over a foot long, and tipped with sharp silver barbs.

Hermione looked at it carefully, then raised her eyes to the man opposite her. He regarded the flogger with interest, his dark eyes alight with something indefinable.

“Impressive. I’ll bet this could inflict a great deal of pain,” she said, her eyes fixated on the black straps.

Her partner smirked in that oh-so-familiar way. “I never knew you had a penchant for leather, Granger. This may change my entire opinion of you and your proclivities.”

* * *

She shrugged. “I don’t need a leather fetish to know that this is probably the murder weapon, do I?”

He saw the lethal whip sitting comfortably in her capable palm, and a look passed between them that had nothing to do with the case they were on. It spoke of their burgeoning, more private partnership, the one the Aurory didn’t know about. His black eyes began to smolder.

“You know, you look very much at home with a whip in your hand, Auror Granger,” he purred.

She smiled. “You always struck me as a man who appreciated leather, Auror Snape.”


	115. Overripe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruised Peach Challenge 2012

The hand that drifted over the rounded flesh was warm. He smiled pleasurably, knowing she was nervous, and trembling.

“Such a lovely shape.” The words were velvet, sliding over the soft bottom presented like an offering. “Round, smooth, sweet as a peach.”

The smack; the cry. The blush, rising on the tender surface.

“Ah, but bruised peaches are the sweetest, love. How much can you endure before you yield? How much is pleasure, how much is pain?”

Severus looked up at his lover, his eyes glazed, his tone pleading. “More, Mistress. Please, …”

Hermione smiled, only too happy to oblige him.


	116. The Seasons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rites of Spring Challenge 2012

Summer was torture. It made him too aware of his pale, skinny limbs, poking from oversized hand-me-down shorts. His mother forced him to play outside, telling him the ‘fresh air and sunshine will do you good.’

He would return home, flash-burned from the sun and the ridicule of the other children who called him names, like ghost and vampire and freak.

He would wander up to his room, and in the night, when the sunburn and the humiliation kept him awake, he would dream that he was powerful. He would dream he was handsome. He would dream he could fly.

* * *

He used to despise autumn for its shifting colours and its smoky air. Autumn held the tinge of betrayal and death. During the month of October, he donned the garments of torture; cilices, hairshirt, crown of thorns. His vestments of repentance were worn from the inside out, and inflicted more pain than their corporeal counterparts could ever hope to match.

Autumn held no hope for redemption. No amount of pain, no amount of tears, no amount of ‘sorry’ were ever enough; even after his two Masters were dust, and he came back empty handed from the dead, the resurrected hero.

* * *

Winter’s frost permeated his bones with a chill that had nothing to do with temperature. It was the frozen part of his soul that felt encased in ice, never to warm again.

Warmth came in the shape of her, his former student; blazing, protective. It caught him unawares, a testimony to her skills. She warmed him from the inside out. In her arms he knew fiery passion and balmy acceptance; cool comfort and nurturing contentment. He longed for change. She gave him renewal.

Like an early thaw, there came the gradual realisation he could love and be loved in return.

* * *

When Spring came, the flowering buds that had once taunted him were beautiful. He rose from a bed of white linen and stared out into a sun-kissed dawn that made him feel as if this was his true resurrection. He curled around the soft form nestled against him. Her sleepy sound delighted him. Her swollen belly was unspeakably beautiful.

He smiled, refreshed and grateful for the dormant seasons of his life, when he’d looked forward to nothing more than the change of light and weather. She made him believe he was handsome. She made him fly. She renewed the seasons.


	117. Night Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Late Night Visitor Challenge 2012

She dreamed of him that first night. Once the dust had settled, and the books and clothing put away, Hermione faced her first night in the castle as its newest resident and settled into her former professor’s old rooms.

The monastic ideal of someone as flinty and knife-edged as Snape could not appeal to the plump old hedonist Slughorn, and Sluggie himself had eschewed these rooms for the more sun-ripened peach of a bedroom in the tower above.

Pity. Hermione looked at the huge bed, awash with velvets, and pictured Snape lying there. It was a pleasantly alluring, bittersweet image.

* * *

She used to dream of him when they were on the run. They were dark, disturbing dreams of being taken like a mastiff takes a bitch. And even though he was behind her, she always knew who it was. She would awaken, afraid she’d made noises enough to stir the boys.

And so in the dreams she walked into the bedroom and found him standing there as she remembered him. Not the last horrible moments, before he sprayed his lifeblood onto her jacket with his last exhalation, but when he was alive and crackling with angry magic and vengeful energy.

* * *

This new dream was different. He was waiting by the bed, black robes hanging from his waist, chest bare, white and cool in the darkness. He regarded her with languid, liquid eyes that drew her to him like a moth to a flame.

“Welcome, Miss Granger,” he said, as if he’d spoken to her yesterday. The hand that beckoned was slender and pale and no less irresistible than the chocolate silk of his voice. His dream wound was hideously scarred, and Hermione ached to touch it, to see if the skin there felt like it looked – smooth, blameless and real.

* * *

He was reluctant, at first, as if he couldn’t trust her. His arms were warm, and his lips against her collarbone felt like fire. “Don’t do this.” The words drifted between them like smoke, and Hermione shivered at his heat.

Night after night, they would meet in this room, this bed. At first, he was content just to hold her, to whisper secrets to her. He was tired, he said. He had wandered, drifted too long. He poured his heart out to her. He was alone; he needed her in that fundamental way a man needs a woman; _a companion_.

* * *

Every night, the dream was an intense, unfulfilled re-enactment of Armageddon. She lay there, panting, lust-stained and frightened of him and what he could do. Each night, pushing more, demanding more, unable to resist, until the night he stripped her bare, and she took his desperate pleasure, begging only one thing of him.

“Please don’t take me like a mastiff taking a bitch.”

Puzzled, he had her, face to face; took her with determination, deliberation, and destination. Her lover, shaking the already-trembling foundations of her being. Her teacher, instructing her with the same ruthless, stylish pedagogy as Joshua taught Jericho.

* * *

Minerva McGonagall sees the tired eyes, the corrupted spirit, and is troubled. “Another sleepless night?”

Severus looks at his headmistress wearily. “It’s worse than we thought.” A trace of pity mars the angular face. “She doesn’t realise that-” He sighs.

“She thinks she’s the one that’s alive and I’m the dream.”

“Oh, no, Severus!”

He nods. “I tried to show her how I admired and remembered her. I thought perhaps she could move on, but, in the end…” he closes his eyes.

“In the end, I find that I need her here every bit as much as she needs me.”


	118. Sleight of Hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark Challenge 2012

They talk about his magic, of course. Even after the glowers, the black clothes, the greasy hair, the hooked nose, the cruelty, what is first and last and _lasts_ is his magic.

Hard-edged and precise, flawlessly executed and seemingly effortless. She knows better. She has seen him in moments of less-than-stellar concentration drop a _Leviosa_ with the grace of a first-year. It’s like watching a card sharp dazzling a crowd with his fans and flutters and slight of hand, only to strike a 52-pickup while trying to perform the most innocuous deck shuffle.

It used to embarrass him. Not anymore.

* * *

He was never good at taking photographs, even wizarding ones. He is too stiff and stilted in the posed ones; he is too blurry and indistinct in the candid photos. Nothing has ever seemed to capture the grace and power he wields like just being near him, watching his magic fly from his fingers like strands of spiders’ webbing.

He is definitely worth ‘seeing live’.

At times, his magic sweeps over her like a warm, spicy breeze from Goa, and she knows he is feeling languid and stirred. At times it blasts by like a runaway moon, intense and _intent._

* * *

Like photographs, portraits cannot capture him; they cannot even hold him captive long enough to make a good impression. At Hogwarts, his portrait sneers down at the Wizarding hope of tomorrow like a challenge: “So you think you’re hard, eh? Think you can top my best? Come and have a go, then.”

He could care less, really.

That portrait was created when he was still young, all black hair and flashing eyes and fathomless, magically-saturated, understated, beautiful dignity. He hates that portrait. Says it makes him look like a sanctimonious arse. He wouldn’t have sat for it but for _her_.

* * *

He is a legend now; like Merlin, they talk of him with both awe and insolence. He is a quiet figure, stooped and white-haired now, his Nimue by his side at every waking hour.

Fame, notoriety, power; he craved them once. Now all he craves is his wife’s company, decent wine, the perfect apple. He is revered, respected and loved. _That is magic_ , he whispers in her ear at night. _Innocence and love and peace and hope. That is true magic._

He has made his mark on the Wizarding world. This time, it is one he is proud to bear.


	119. Light Mark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark Challenge 2012

“Look at me.”

The last words he would ever speak, to a boy he despised, for the woman he loved.

In the final glance before numbness blessedly blinds him to the pain, he sees her eyes.

Granger. Woman, warrior. He wanted her physically once; the goad of his enforced, self-flagellating, resentful celibacy. Her eyes! He now realises he’s underestimated everything about her.

His senses grow sharper. He watches in fascination as she draws a symbol over his body, hovering like _Morsmordre_ in the sky. There is no pain; he feels both sadness and regret.

Wasn’t death supposed to end those?

* * *

Deep nothing; awareness and isolation and rooms with no doors. This is what death is. The absence of life.

He hoped to see Lily, but instead he hears battle noise and screams and reunions of those who have passed the veil. They pass him by in the dark, and no one hears his cry.

He is alone in the dark again, like the closet which hid him from Da’s drunken fists.

He hears Granger bellow a curse; she sounds like a frightened child and a battle goddess.

If only he had known he had such a woman to live for.


	120. Tribute

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snape's Birthday Challenge 2012

During the first Memorial Service, the so-called Golden Trio were conspicuous in their absence. Even Ronald Weasley, whose brother had perished in the final battle, was nowhere to be seen. “Overwhelmed with grief,” was the explanation from then-temporary Headmaster Filius Flitwick. Minerva McGonagall was hospital, recovering.

The service was outdoors on a rainy June day; mourners let the rain mingle with their tears as they grieved not only for those who had died, but for the destruction of families, homes and tranquility.

The fresh grave of former Headmaster Severus Snape stood aside, neglected, impotent, unmourned. No one knew the truth.

* * *

The Fifth Memorial Service made the Daily Prophet, notably for the involvement of the trio. They organised it to coincide with the birthday of the newly exonerated Severus Snape, who had been posthumously awarded every Ministry award in existence plus a few they created for him.

As Minister Kingsley read the roll call of the dead, the strains of Barber’s Adagio for Strings washed over the audience. Hermione Granger and Professor McGonagall put their head in their hands and wept pitifully. Potter and Weasley looked ahead, their eyes bleak with grief.

The four of them left immediately after the ceremony.

* * *

The Tenth Memorial Service was to be the last, and again landed on Snape’s birthday, in honour of the fallen hero. By then, he was a household name, a martyr to the light. Potter and Weasley were there, Potter with his wife and children, Wealsey enjoying his playboy status, and Hermione Granger, a legend herself. Famously private and reclusive, Hermione sat by Ronald Weasley’s side, and they held hands, fueling speculation of a reconciliation of sorts.

The service was long, and during one point Weasley gasped and choked, and had to be given a glass of water to calm him.

* * *

The Barber Adagio played again, and Hermione wept ashamedly on Weasley’s shoulder, and he comforted her tenderly as the heartwrenching music overwhelmed her. He whispered softly to her, and his words seemed to comfort her. Until the end of the service, when Minister of Magic Arthur Weasley spoke eloquently of duty and loyalty and love and sacrifice, and this time it was Hermione who comforted Ronald Weasley, as he turned to her and wept.

Together the trio walked away from the ceremony, and only the most astute observer noticed that Potter and Granger seemed to support Weasley more than usual.

* * *

The trio Apparated to a little cottage in the Scottish highlands, in the nick of time. Hermione watched with a laugh as Ronald’s hair faded to black; his freckles bled away and blue eyes darkened.

In the doorway stood the real Ron Weasley. “How did it go?”

Severus Snape, very much alive, grumbled, “A little warning would have been in order.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Lav-Lav was most disappointed that Won-Won didn’t sit with her.”

Unrepentantly, Weasley shrugged. “Did the polyjuice hold out?”

Hermione looked up at her husband, the oft-mourned Severus Snape. “I think we got away with it.”

* * *

Severus Snape is a hero’s name, a memory. Any resemblance to anyone, alive or dead, is a mere coincidence.

In a little cottage in the wintry Scottish highlands, a man and a woman live quietly. They are liked by their neighbours, but are left alone. The man is quiet and dark, a little dour; the woman is young and friendly, and they are both too wrapped up in one another to notice much else.

They understand life is a treasured gift, and one they came perilously close to missing. Every day is precious, full of challenge and discovery – and passion.

* * *

His birthday is a quiet affair this year. They sit and quietly celebrate with wine and cake and gifts.

“I have one more gift,” the woman says, smiling, “but you can’t open it now. You’ll have to wait until summer.”

He frowns, puzzled. “What sort of birthday gift has to wait-“

The man grows still, and suddenly kneels at the woman’s feet, placing a large, pale hand on her just-swelling belly.

“Hermione?” His voice is soft with hope and love. Tears fill his eyes. “Our little one?”

She strokes his face adoringly. “Yes, Severus. You’re going to be a father.”


	121. Who's Got The Bubbles?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fluff Challenge

“Mmm… tickles my nose.”

“Granger, what are you-?”

“I’m attempting Champagne fellatio… I take it from your silence you’ve never-”

“Afraid not, sadly. One of many deviant acts you excel in that I have never experienced. It sounds alluring and painful in equal measures. How can you, erm, do it if the bubbles tickle your nose?”

“Bubbles don’t tickle, Severus darling. You do.”

“I do… what? Oh, Merlin, that’s…. incredible! So… deep… down… _feeslikehundredsoflittletonguesohHermioneYessssssss…”_

“Did you like?”

“The Champagne bubbles felt quite pleasurable, I’ll grant you.”

“Thank you for that!”

“Thank you for what?”

“I haven’t yet opened the champagne.”


	122. Snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winter Challenge 2011 - another personal favourite.

I will teach you snow.

You were my best, my brightest, my worthiest pupil, but in the end you taught me so much more.

I held you with breathless, trembling, unbelieving passion; in return you filled my once empty life with love.

Now I am gone, I have only one more lesson to teach. When grief takes you from our home, come to me again, to my classroom on the hill, and sit upon my grave. Listen to the snow; hear my voice in its silence. I will never be far away.

I must teach you to live without me.

* * *

The first night you lay with me, the snow fell deep, blanketing us from the world. In the silence I could only hear your voice, and the shivering cadence of my own. In those moments, I wished with all my heart that you and I were the only creatures on earth.

I have lived a life in snow, muffled by foolish dreams and pain-filled choices. I did not wish to hear of the possibilities of sunlight and warmth; they were too much to hope for.

And yet, little one, you gave me permission to turn my face to the sun.

* * *

I did not want you to grieve. The man I use to be is not worth it; the man I became has no need of it. All that you helped me to learn, all that you gave, it has no need to be mourned.

I will take it with me into the snow. I will lie down in its soft, white bed, and it will cover me in its stillness. Death isn’t the end. It is an adventure. When you join me, I will be well and whole again. We will make love and there will be no more pain.

* * *

In the darkness that was winter, we walked here for the last time. There was snow in your hair; I could see each flake in its magnificent uniqueness contrasted against your raven locks. Each one seemed to be specially chosen to adorn you.

“I would like to rest here,” you said, as if stopping by a brook for a picnic, and nodded because you thought I’d want to continue to live without you.

Now you are gone, and the snow falls soft and quiet where you lay.

It’s peaceful here. I will sit and hear your lesson one last time.


	123. A Different Shade of Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vampire Challenge 2011

She carried him into the infirmary, bruised and bleeding. He was long thought to be dead; why had she returned to his broken body after what she had seen, after all she knew about him?

She cleaned him, held his head as he vomited the toxins. She kept him from injuring himself through the convulsions; his long arms and legs lashing out, kicking helplessly, shaming him. How many times had he struck her, trying to gain control over his pain-laced, thrashing limbs? Enough to break the skin; he’d struck her just above her eyebrow; a careless fingernail gouged her cheek, and a flailing backhand split her chapped and shivering lips. Every time he caused a new injury, he tried to apologise; her wounds became a stigmata that called to him like a zealot.

He remembered lying on the infirmary cot, whimpering and panting, burning with fever and agony, and as she held him down, begging him to _relax, Professor, I’ve got you. It’s going to be alright!_ the blood dropped from her lips onto his.

It is the only nourishment that gives him any satisfaction now.

Three years on, he has recovered. He reads, he creates potions, he writes papers. He lives a normal life, except for one, minor deviation to his life-long routine. He is exonerated – from everyone except her.

When he calls, she has to go to him. The boys are fearful; she has been known to hex them if they stand in her way. They don’t understand, and he doesn’t blame them – he doesn’t understand himself. But he knows she feels the call, and she arrives, humiliated that she can’t fight him, raw with desire and angry that she has come of her own volition.

He is not proud of their first sexual encounter. It was little more than rape. It was horrible; it was wonderful. Lying sprawled on his front room floor, her clothing all but torn from her, she accepted his apology, still not comprehending what he had done. His distress was genuine; he tugged at her soft heart with his obvious neediness and remorse. She actually held him afterward, comforting him even as her blood dried on the corners of his mouth, and he greedily licked the fingers he’d used to batter his way through her maidenhead. Her virgin’s blood sealed something between them; it was a Dark magic that only fueled his addiction and her servitude to it.

Now, when the blood calls her, she approaches him joyless, resigned. She is pale and beautiful, and he can barely let her get inside the house before he’s pawing at her. They undress quickly, their eyes locked on one another, as if afraid something terrible will happen if they look away. Their sex is brief and cripplingly pleasurable, and it is all he can do to hold back until he can make her come.

He doesn’t hurt her anymore; he has learned how to arouse her. He is as patient as the blood allows; it always thrills him to see her lose control and give herself to him. Her sounds make him feel like an animal, free and blameless, and even as she writhes and pants beneath him, he is impatient for his own bliss.

Before she arrives he always files his teeth to sharper points to make penetration easier; he can’t bear the thoughts of hurting her, even though her tears tell him he does. Pain is not what this relationship is about; it never has been. The caring part of him wonders how she can allow herself to orgasm, knowing he will bury his fangs in her neck at the moment of ecstasy. She never refuses him, and something about their frenzied coupling must be necessary to her, mustn’t it?

Her blood, rushing into his mouth, always makes him come. It is the only thing that does. He has tried other women, other blood. This woman, this blood, is the only thing that makes him feel alive enough to get an erection. The mere scent of her menses can inflame him into uncontrollable, lust-crazed ecstasy.

One day he refuses to let her leave. She pleads with him to let her go; she has a life, people who care about her; she can’t just disappear. _I care about you_ , he mutters sullenly. _Don’t I give you pleasure? Don’t you leave feeling loved and cherished?_

She weeps. _You’re ill, Severus,_ she cries _. You need help. Please let me help you._

He reaches for her, but she pushes him away. It enrages him; she has never refused him. They fight, but he is too strong for her, and soon he is pounding into her, marking her as his, tearing open her slender throat; he stiffens and moans as the sweetness of her perfect blood floods his mouth.

And all the while she screams, _You need help, Severus! Please let me help you. I’m a friend, Professor. No one’s going to harm you. You’re safe here…_

When he awakes, he is in the Hogwarts infirmary. The end of the war is days old, and the exhausted girl dozes by his bed, her wild mane tangled and dirty.

As he moves, she awakes instantly, examining him. “Thank Merlin! The fever’s broken.” She holds his head and gives him sips of water. “You had us all so frightened. You were delirious for awhile and having the most terrible nightmares, but I think the worst is behind you now.”

He tries to speak, but she stops him. “Please rest. Everyone knows the truth now, Professor. You’re a hero.”

He stares at her in astonishment, and she smiles, then winces as the movement opens a large cut on her mouth. A drop of blood squeezes from the split skin, like a fat, rich ruby, and she grows very still as his hand reaches out, swipes the red bead from her lips, and brings it to his parched mouth.


	124. Through Death's Dark Veil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dead Challenge 2011

“The Dark Lord wishes to see you in the Shrieking Shack,” Lucius said, looking away, unable to meet his eyes.

That was when Severus knew he was going to die.

He walked down toward the Shack, head held high. He would not plead for his life. He would die gladly, if he could have the chance to kill that bastard first.

As he passed a shadow, he felt it. A magic that washed over his body like a final benediction. It was her final caress, and he suppressed the desire to call her name. It was her final gift: Hermione.

* * *

He lay, gasping, in unspeakable pain, giving Potter his memories, and she was there. Sweet brown eyes, as dear to him as his own heartbeat. His only regret was that he would never see those tear-filled eyes again.

He wasn’t afraid. “Look at me,” he said, and Potter did. But it was Hermione he saw, and he told her goodbye with his eyes. He asked for forgiveness, he made her promise to live, find love. Finally, he thanked her for that last, sweet comforting magic that had given him the courage to walk to his death without fear, without shame.


	125. Slow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anticipation, No Dialogue, She waits, Undergarments Challenges 2011. Another personal favourite.

_Slow_ , he whispers, his voice menacing in its very gentleness.

They have had their frenzied, fevered moments; desperate, dark tangles of passion, straining to fulfillment.

But he loves it slow.

His hands are languid, drawing runes over her flesh, leaving traces of lust in their wake.

In the red-glow of the firelight, she removes her clothing one piece at a time, while he watches. Sometimes he touches himself to urge her on, to rush; he punishes her so sweetly for her impatience.

He saves her knickers for last. She is forbidden to remove them herself.

That won’t do at all.

* * *

She believes he does this because he wishes to be in control. He was, after all, her professor – and she his student. They danced around one another until they could no longer deny their desire, and found it absurd to try. His dark, intense sullen stare makes her body ache.

He knows better. It has been so long since anyone allowed his touch, much less wanted it. Can he be chided for savouring the moment? He reads books; he practices ways to excite her, to make her want him more. He adores every wild corkscrew curl on her brilliant head.

* * *

Slow. She is as taut as a bow string, waiting for his hands. He knows she is needy, longing. He makes her wait.

It’s always the same. He peels her remaining undergarment down, as if opening a present; sometimes with one finger, hooked into the waistband. Sometimes his hands slide between the fabric and her flesh, and draws it slowly downward. She is whimpering by the time it reaches the ground.

Slow. When she tries to hurry him, he merely smiles.

And ties her down.

He loves her, but he rarely indulges her. Instead, he takes her. Perfect. And slow.

* * *

Large hands glide over her skin like moonlight, slow. Long fingers slide into secret places with the sensuous whisper of a young girl’s dream, so slow. He brings her to her agonised peak with soft words spoken like beads of oil dripping over her trembling flesh so very slow.

When he moves in her, it is like treacle, slow, dark and bittersweet. When he sets his pace, they move like dancers underwater. It is maddening, and he watches her carefully, like a potion, simmering at the lowest heat. He knows the most potent brew is the result of the slow burn.

* * *

She becomes an animal beneath him; panting and fierce. She stops caring about proprieties and niceties. She screams filthy things and pleads for him to do them. He growls filthy promises and then performs them. And through it all, he never relinquishes his iron control over them both.

He has taught her the darker joys of begging; not for respite – for release. She does not know how hard it is for him to effortlessly keep her on the edge of that precipice. She only knows that when she is allowed to fall, it is at her own speed.


	126. Diaries and Letters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peeves Challenge2011

Dear Diary,

Saw them again in the halls. They were snogging like third-years. Honestly. I think I need to stop this right now, before they start copulating like animals.

Dear Diary,

There they were – ruttting like stags in heat against the door! I complained, but _he_ just tutted and sent me on my way. Disgusting.

Dear Diary,

That does it! I’m minding my own business, and _they_ come along, tearing at each other like teenagers. So I got ‘em good. Right when he’s about to go off, I screamed as loud as I could. She screamed. The entire _school_ screamed.

* * *

Dear Professors Snape,

I am sorry I alarmed you the other day. The Bloody Baron said I had to apologise or I’d be banned from the Halloween festivities for the rest of your natural lives. So, here goes:

I’m sorry you can’t control yourselves.

I’m sorry you can’t get a room and not _do it_ in the halls like seven-year Slytherins on a bet.

I’m sorry you had an earth-shattering orgasm because I screamed at you, and this caused Professor Snape to drop you.

I’m sorry you can’t take a joke.

Insincerely Yours, (because the Bloody Baron made me),

Peeves


	127. Fine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fornicate or Die Challenge

“What do I do?” she asked, grateful that her voice was steady, calm. She was rather proud of the fact she didn’t sound inexperienced and immature while standing before her potions master, his trousers undone, his black pants low on his slender hips.

Snape looked up at his apprentice, and his face was naked of its iron-hard control, its rigid intent. It was as open a look as Hermione had ever seen him wear.

“I would think it obvious, Miss Granger,” he growled darkly. “You know what to do.”

The poison crept outward from the entry point, like a web.

* * *

Hermione had not seen the purple spider until Snape cursed, slapping something from his leg. Her eyes had widened as he hastily unbuckled his belt, and unbuttoned his trousers.

“Sir?” she had squeaked, alarmed. “I’m not sure this is-“

“Don’t flatter yourself, Granger! I’ve been bitten! The venom is toxic! Help me!”

Which was why, in the Forbidden Forest, Apprentice Granger was peeling her Potions Master’s underwear from his hips with shaking hands. The tiny spider, now dead, hardly looked capable of the malignant bloom of poison running beneath Snape’s smooth, white hips.

Hermione looked at his groin, and swallowed.

* * *

 _Oh. Shit._ His slender hips were like marble, blemishless, throwing the vermillion strands of venom in sharp relief. A stark treasure trail of soft, black hair peeked from just beyond his briefs. Hermione had dreamed about those hips…

“What exactly are you looking _for_ , Granger? It’s not the bottom of a tea cup!”

Startled from her reverie, Hermione pointed her wand at the bite mark and tried to draw the venom from the wound, but Snape stopped her.

“It can’t be extracted magically,” he said, his face suddenly flushed and embarrassed. He was holding a knife. “You have to- ”

* * *

 _Oh shit._ Hermione watched wide-eyed as he drew the knife across the wound, cursing as he opened the skin. His voice was raspy. “You’ll have to – “ It didn’t seem possible to turn any redder, but he managed. “Suck out the poison. Spit it out. Take care not to swallow any.”

Hermione gulped. The very idea of sucking on Snape’s skin was… oh holy shit, he –

“I’m sorry, Miss Granger,” he said, looking mortified. “If I could do it myself-“

“No!” She said, too quickly. “It’s fine, sir. It’s – “

She lowered her mouth to his silken skin. _It’s fine_ …

* * *

Two minutes later, and the last of the poison disappeared from his skin, leaving only a red bruise where she’d sucked the poison. Hermione healed the wound, relieved. It had been hard work; the poison was resilient, but she was nothing if not tenacious, and his hip was white and pristine again.

“Thank you, Miss Granger,” he said, clearing his throat. Snape was sitting against a tree, staring down at her with the most incredible expression.

Breathless, she leaned against him, and was suddenly aware of the rigid heat against her cheek. Part of him was interested, then. Very interested.

* * *

“I think you need a little more help.” She managed not to sound coy. His erection was unexpected, but by no means unwelcome.

At a glance, he looked as you’d expect a man to look, watching a witch who had spent an indecent amount of time with her lips only inches away from his manhood. His looked vulnerable; doubtful. Hopeful.

Hermione smiled, eased his briefs down further, and ran a soft hand down the hard, hot flesh. Snape moaned, and closed his eyes.

“It isn’t necessary…”

“I want to.”

“Hermione… oh, you _do_ want to! Ooohhh, gods, it’s…”

_It’s fine…_


	128. Wasted Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At The Veil Challenge 2011

“There are times I love you so much I’m convinced I’ve known you for several lifetimes.”

She looked at him with a mixture of love and sorrow. “And yet this one has been so short, and so full of pain.” She took his hand. “I don’t regret a moment of it, Severus.”

Her husband looked up at her from his bed, his frail hand in hers. “I wasted years on foolish decisions, wrong choices and pointless infatuation.” He tried to smile through the pain.

“But know this. Not one moment, not one second of time spent with you was wasted.”


	129. With That Nose?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snoring Challenge 2011

“Which side of the bed?”

“Umm… right. Or the left. I’m not choosy.”

“I’d heard that.”

“Oy, you…oh, this is nice. Isn’t this nice?”

“It would be if your hair wasn’t up my nose.”

“And a lovely nose it is.”

“Is that a remark?”

“Touchy, aren’t we? You don’t snore do you?”

“Do I look like I snore?”

“With that nose? Yes.”

“I thought we were past this puerile talk about my nose.”

“Well, I just… oh, my god… is that your…”

“Nose? Oh, yes.”

“Oh, my… yes, just there, there…oh, yes! Severus!”

“Still worried about my snoring, Hermione?”


	130. The Alumni

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Late Paper Challenge 2011

She just wanted, just once, for him to say it. He never did. From the first day in class, she expected him to acknowledge her, like the other professors. Even now, after it’s all over, she wants to run to his class and say, “See, I was worthy! I could think outside the textbook! I could be a warrior!”

She tried every angle; she was aloof, enthusiastic, funny, sweet, stubborn, determined, quiet, noisy. She set fire to his robes; nothing. Whatever it took to get his attention, she lacked it. He simply looked through her as if she wasn’t there.

* * *

What started out as a puzzled frustration became a crusade. Her potions were perfection and her parchments were twice as long as required. Surely this would make him notice. He graded with scathing remarks as if he didn’t know to whom the parchment belonged.

She watched, in petrified terror, as he gently cradled her in his arms and fed her the potion to release her. Even as life stole back into her limbering body, pins and needles flooding agony into her waking limbs, he was walking away. Not even saving her life meant enough to stay behind to acknowledge her.

* * *

He cut her dead, after Sirius Black escaped. Not even his fury at being knocked out cold was enough to deign him to speak to her. She had menses now, and her powers were growing with her estrogen, and she understood that it wasn’t just that she wanted him to look at her, but that her body recognised his magic.

It had a kinship with hers, and even as she tried to show him that she was a good student and a good witch, his magic would wash over her like smoke. It wasn’t sexual; it was instinct, blood; belonging.

* * *

She wanted to feel like a princess; it was her first dance, and she wanted to be seen as someone other than Harry’s friend, the bookworm, the insufferable know-it-all. Funny that when he finally took notice, he sliced her to pieces with it.

Too old to be young and too young to be old; that was her. That’s where he was, too, she thought. Her magic could sniff fear on him now, and it was a grim, metallic thing that made her protective and caring.

He saw her at the ball, alone and crying. He walked past without a word.

* * *

Parry, hex, block, jinx, shield, hex. In the DA she drove Harry to bring out everyone’s best; she avoided Umbridge, she worked diligently and kept her head down. Now that she wanted to be inconspicuous, she would see him watching her, a puzzled expression on his face.

Perhaps his magic could sense the changes in her, the rebellion, the fact that she no longer wanted or begged for his attention. At times he would appear wherever she was, and she would run from him. At mealtimes, they would sometimes stare at one another for several minutes, each daring the other.

* * *

She avoided looking at him. His eyes followed her everywhere when they were together. She no longer tried to answer questions in class. She avoided him. He would always meet her on her rounds as a prefect, and she would turn the other way.

In the spring he cornered her in the dark, close and frightening. She could feel his magic lapping against her like the river Styx. “What do you want?” he said, softly, unsmiling, unloved.

“To help,” she managed.

He spun on his heel and walked away. Three days later Dumbledore was dead. She cried for his murderer.

* * *

The Quibbler loves for her to be guest editor. Sales increase 200% when she does. It has been ten years since she saw the light fade from his eyes, and his sweet, powerful magic receded like the tide and never returned. She knows from her research that this kind of binding only happens once in a life; she will never experience it again.

She only wanted to get to know him, to make him like her, to feel the rush of powerful magic pull over her like a canopy of light. She has only memories now, and they are fading.

* * *

She has sat before an empty parchment for two weeks, trying to sum up her feelings for him for their readers. What can she say that hasn’t been said, or will be understood?

He was unique and precious and was only appreciated after his death, which angers her and makes her bitter and snarky. When she called Ron a dunderhead a few years back he called her Miss Snape.

She soon ended their engagement. Anyone other than Severus Snape would be worse than a poor substitute. She knew she would never feel whole again.

Her magic would mourn him forever.


	131. My Last Love Song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song Lyrics Challenge - From Larry Gatlin

_Love songs keep coming to my head when I think about you ‘cause that’s what you do to me,_   
_So if you don’t want any more love songs written about you, here’s what you’re gonna have to do;_   
_Just write me off for the last time and I’ll write my last love song about you._   
_I_ _’ll only want you as long as I can bleed; I’ll only need you as long as I need, I’ll only love you ten minutes past eternity; other than that, you don’t really mean a damn thing to me._

_My Last Love Song – Gatlin Brothers_

* * *

Sometimes in the dark, with only Crookshanks to keep her company, she will sing. Love songs, lullabies, anything she thinks would soothe him. That he was in pain, that he needed someone (even her), worries at her every night like a sliver of wood under the skin.

She sings to soothe him, to ease his suffering.

He heard her sing once. Late at night, in the tower, trying to comfort herself. He waited almost an hour, listening; then gave her a detention.

Sometimes she thinks if she sings long enough and sweet enough, she will sing him back to life.


	132. Losing The World To Gain My Soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angel of Death Challenge 2011

* * *

_You can stop crying now_ , she told herself resolutely. She stared at her face in the mirror, grimacing at her swollen eyes, her snotty nose, her reddened, tear-stained cheeks. _Luna says every tear you cry means one less you will need to shed…_

Luna was lovely but sometimes she talked complete pants.

She stood alone at the modest black stone that marked his grave. Nothing grand for him, oh no. No flowers or tributes or throngs of mourners.

Just a bushy-haired know-it-all, standing at a forsaken grave, mourning a man she had desperately tried to get to know and understand.

* * *

When does mourning become a way of life? When do you think of dying to the point you stop living? Hermione thought she might be there. She stopped taking care of herself, bathed only when she could smell herself, retraced steps and studied pensieves and wrote Arithmancy charts in her sleep.

Ron wanted to have her committed after the first month. “It’s just survivor’s trauma, Ron,” Harry had insisted, understanding her more than he was willing to admit. “Give her time.” Both of them watched her, muttering away to herself, her hair a rat’s nest of determination and stubborn denial.

* * *

“No! Hermione, that’s Dark Magic! Stop it!”

She looked up at Ron with eyes blank and flat. Her wand was in her hand, and she was calmly slicing three-inch gashes in her arms. “Go away, Ron,” she said, calmly, watching in fascination as the blood beaded from her wounds. “I’m busy.”

Harry watched her with growing despair. They were moving on; why couldn’t she? What was in that brilliant brain of hers? “Hermione, I think we need to talk.”

“No, not now, Harry,” she replied, as if in a trance. They all watched as her blood pooled into the cauldron.

* * *

“It’s for the best.”

“I know. I just can’t bear to see her like this,” Ron wept, as he watched her disappear into St. Mungo’s.

“In time, perhaps she’ll recover. The strain, you see. Too much for her. Better to do this before she harms herself, or someone else.”

Harry and Ron watched Hermione fade daily. It was as if she’d decided that she was going to die. When they asked why, she said, “Someone has to mourn. Someone has to atone. Someone has to pay.”

They didn’t know how he knew to come. They didn’t know he was alive.

* * *

He swept in as if he’d never lay gasping, coating the air with his bloody, misted breath as he gave his last secrets to his old enemy’s son. He simply walked past them to her bed and looked down on the girl, wasted away to a dull rag with enormous sorrow-filled eyes.

“It is time to stop, Hermione,” he said, his deep voice brooking no argument. “As you can see, rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

She looked up at him, and smiled. Really smiled for the first time. “It worked,” she said, licking her cracked, dry lips.

* * *

He sighed. “Yes, it worked, but at what cost? I think you’ll find it wasn’t worth it. I wasn’t worth it.”

He raised his wand and muttered an incantation. Colour flooded her cheeks, and she passed from exhausted unconsciousness to peaceful slumber. He turned to her stunned friends.

“Potter, Weasley, stop gaping like two gigged frogs and say goodbye. She’s going to die.”

Harry, the first to recover, turned Lily’s eyes on him, furiously. “What did you do to her?”

Snape looked at him, then turned back to Hermione. With surprising gentleness, he whispered, “She called me back to her.”

* * *

Harry and Ron rushed to her side. She opened her eyes, and looked past them to the dark man in the corner of the room. “I just wanted to stop hurting.”

He nodded, as if they were the only two people in the room. “I know, Hermione. We’ll talk soon.” In his most insistent, silvery voice, he murmured, “Now, say your goodbyes.”

She looked at the ‘boys’, and smiled. “Don’t mourn me now. I’m ready.”

Holding her hand, Harry cried, “Hermione, why?” She smiled, but she was already with him. Snape.

“Because I couldn’t bear for him to be alone.”


	133. All Philosophy Aside, What Do We Do Now?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angel of Death Challenge 2011

She grinned, and she had not felt like grinning for a long, long time. They say when you’re healthy, you can’t remember how it feels to be unwell, and when you’re sick, you can’t remember how it felt to feel good.

She had been in the latter category so long she wasn’t sure the former existed.

She was not exactly afraid of death, just of the absence of life. It would be a pretty piss-poor thing to finally slip the bonds of this earthbound pain that had taken over her life, only to find herself bored out of her tits when she reached the other side.

* * *

It was warm, and golden. It reminded her of Tuscany, of October, of her own personal Autumn, before the pain settled in and took away every pleasure she’d enjoyed: the crunch of a crisp apple, the sweet ecstasy of the perfect orgasm; reading her favourite book for the tenth time.

He pretended not to know she was there, of course. He looked out on the landscape, a brooding Byronic hero. He had always known how to make an entrance; she had never, and would never, forget his exit.

It had nearly killed her too.

* * *

“It won’t be what you expected,” he said, not turning around. Snarky bastard, always wanting her to drink him in, before he deigned to acknowledge her.

“So I see,” she said, wryly. “Has the afterlife been _that_ disappointing?”

“Somewhat, but I suspect it’s just about to get better.”

He turned to her, finally, all dark eyes and sardonic eyebrows. “You are part of it now.”

Her heart gave a little leap, as if recognizing a favourite song. He was glad to see her; he just had never bothered to learn how to show it.

Bored she would definitely NOT be.


	134. Angel of Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angel of Death Challenge 2011

“I don’t understand,” Ron said, tears streaming down his homely, gentle face. “She’s a witch! How could she be dying of this Muggle disease?”

Ginny sighed. “She’s Muggleborn, Ron. There’s still so much we don’t know.” She tried to comfort her brother. “We’ll do everything we can, of course. But Ron,” she added, forcing herself to look into his eyes, “it might be wise to tell the kids. They need to be prepared for the worst.”

Ron turned away, and sobbed. After all they’d been through; war, marriage, children, infidelity. They had survived it together. Then Hermione got this cancer.

* * *

She wasn’t afraid. She told herself this over and over. _I’m not afraid_. But the mirror told her differently. The Muggle medicines had made her hair fall out, the wizarding remedies had caused her to drop three stone. She could pretend all she liked, but the pain got worse with every passing day.

She tried to talk to Ron, but he started to cry each time she brought up the subject. The children were helpless, frightened, angry. She didn’t blame them. She was herself.

She wanted to face death with bravery, with her mind and faculties intact. She wanted dignity.

* * *

Funny that _he_ was on her mind so much. She hadn’t thought of him at all for a long time. She sometimes felt guilty that she’d shunted him back in a corner of her mind, behind the memories of growing up and learning and marriage and child bearing, and forgiving.

No! She would not use her last days to throw Ron’s dalliances in his face. She used that word a lot. It made the acts seem less important, less fatal. She’d been a good wife; she’d forgiven.

But the thoughts of _him_ , now, _they_ merited repentance. She wanted him again.

* * *

Leaving Severus Snape on the floor of the shack had been the most horrific thing she’d ever done, but she made herself walk away. She’d already paid dearly for that one night of passion, shortly after Dumbledore’s death, when she’d sought him out and made him tell her the truth.

When had pain and anguish turned to anger, then turned to passion? All she knew was that one minute she was shouting her fury at him, and the next he was kissing her with a desperation so overwhelming that she could not tear her clothing from her body fast enough.

* * *

And so she’d returned to Ron, a sore and heartsick, wracked with guilt and determined to be the best girlfriend in history, knowing that Severus Snape was a dead man and she would never see him again.

When Ron got caught the first time inflagrante, Hermione swallowed her anger and remembered the pale man with the black hair, panting over her, spreading her legs with his large hands and saying, “I’m going to hurt you.” It was the most honest thing he’d ever said to her, even though the act itself was far less painful than leaving him to die.

* * *

“Ron, I think it’s time,” Ginny said, a quiet urgency in her voice, and Ron dashed into the hospital room.

“Hermione!” he cried, and took her hand.

“How long have you been there?” she asked, a look of wonder on her ravaged features.

“I just got here,” he replied, kissing her cold hand.

“I’ve missed you,” she said, tears in her eyes. Ron looked up to tell her he’d only been gone a little while, but she was not looking at him. She was smiling at the silvery form radiating light at the end of the bed.

“You’ve come back.”

* * *

He looked exactly the same. “I decided I should repay the courtesy and greet you when you arrived.”

“Can I go now?” she said, hopefully, and made to rise from the bed.

“No!” Ron cried, and tried to hold her in place.

Severus snorted in disdain. “No style at all. You’d think he’d be happy to see you free from pain.”

She shrugged. “He and the children will miss me.”

“I have missed you.”

His arms were warm, and he smelled like cedar and patchouli. “Come home with me.”

Home was passion and fire and bliss – and no more pain.


	135. Sonnet Seventeen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angel of Death Challenge...and I love you as dark things are loved...thank you, Naruda.

He stood at the dais, and looked out onto the hopeless faces of his children and his friends, and willed his heart to beat, his chest to rise, his mouth to speak.

 _It’s alright, Severus._ He could hear her say the words in his head. _Be strong this one time, this last time, and you can rest._

“I should like, if I may,” he began, his voice sonorous and beautiful, but cool and distant, as if reading aloud from a boring book, “To read Sonnet Seventeen, by Pablo Neruda. It was a favourite of my wife’s. I beg your indulgence.”

* * *

It was a sin to love someone this much; to believe that being loved meant never being hurt again. He should have been old enough to know, but he’d grown too used to that sweet, sure feeling. It had been long enough coming in his life, and he thought that meant that he’d earned the right to keep it.

He believed it right up to the day she died. She hadn’t suffered. She hadn’t been afraid. She merely looked into his eyes and smiled, and said, “I love you,” and exhaled quietly while he held her.

She never inhaled again.

* * *

He cleared his throat, and began to read, and those that heard closed their eyes, for they were hearing words he should never have spoken aloud to anyone but her:

_“I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:  
I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.”_

He had begun with strength and purpose, his voice telling the tale, but his heart was listening, and it betrayed him. He could feel his throat tighten and burn around the tears he could not shed.

* * *

For a moment, the voice faltered, and the only sound in the hall was his harsh breathing. His hands gripped the podium, and he swayed, then stiffened his spine. With a shaking voice, he continued:

_“I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries hidden within itself the light of those flowers,  
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.”  
_

He closed his eyes, and gasped harshly as the tears fell unchecked. He felt no shame that he had disgraced himself in front of his children, his friends.

* * *

All he could feel was the empty space she had occupied – the place his heart had vacated the moment he laid it at her feet and begged her not to crush it under another thoughtless Gryffindor heel. She had gathered his scarred, frightened heart in her arms and cradled it like a babe the rest of her life, and in return, he’d worshipped the space she occupied within him.

He had made promises, and he vowed to keep them, even though they killed him by inches. One such promise was this poem, their poem. He could do that at least.

* * *

_“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where, I love you simply, without problems or pride…”_

Where was his pride now, he thought. A broken man, weeping, wondering if she still cradled his heart? No – foolish question. She had returned it when she died. He knew, because he could feel it fluttering against the cage in his breast, cramping and crushing, breaking and dying.

Had Lily broken it? No. For all his tears, the careless hurts of his boyhood were no more painful than a pebble in his boot. This was heartbreak. This was death; his death.

* * *

He looked out on the crowd, hazy through his tears, and sniffed, feeling the crushing pain again. His heart, his foolish heart had been deceived. It thought, like him, it would be safe and protected forever. And now it was betraying him, and he forced himself to keep speaking, remembering, understanding.

_“I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you,_

_so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.”_

* * *

Those that caught his body as it slumped to the ground only spoke of it during late, dark nights. They whispered of his dying words as he wept for his wife; how he whispered her name, and smiled as his heart burst within him. How a ghostly hand wiped the tears from his pale cheeks and blue lips.

And their children mourned, but with resigned understanding. For she had been his stage, his wand, his magic. They had known that he would never survive the loss of his heart, and they were secretly glad he had never bothered to try.


	136. The Three - Beauxbatons – Veela: Loveliness; Durmstrang – Karkarov: Tact; Hogwarts – Diggory: Forfeit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Triwizard Challenge 2011

**Beauxbatons – Veela Loveliness**

She stood on the steps, wishing she were anyone else. Humiliated by Ron, snickered at by her peers, leered at by Viktor, she felt as ill-equipped to deal with the evening as a Blast-ended Skrewt.

“It is a very cold night to be outside without winter clothing, Miss Granger.”

The voice made her jump, and she cringed, knowing the voice’s owner held her in such contempt.

Wordlessly, he cast a warming charm. It enveloped her with more than heat.

She managed a sad smile. “My feet hurt, sir, and, well…” She looked away. Nothing she said would be good enough.

~~~~~

**Durmstrang – Karkarov Tact**

He watched her all evening, struggling with Krum, Weasley, her own insecurities and her silly shoes. She kept her dignity for the most part, and tried to keep her head held high – a princess in exile.

He felt as ill-equipped to deal with her as a tongue-tied third year.

“It is a very cold evening to be outside without winter clothing, Miss Granger.” The moment the words left his mouth, he thought, _oh brilliant, Severus. Blind her with the obvious_.

He cast the warming charm, hoping she would feel his care, his concern. Nothing he did would be good enough.

~~~~~

**Hogwarts – Diggory Forfeit**

Dumbledore was aware that Severus followed Miss Granger. He previously dismissed it as infatuation, but infatuation left to fester would eventually make Severus useless to him. They were too ill-equipped to win the war without his Potions master’s compliance.

The girl was innocent; she was blameless, but her Gryffindor kindness drew Severus like a moth to the flame. Dumbledore heard the whispered warming charm; he heard the murmur of longing in Severus’ incantation. It pleaded, _notice me, like me, want me…_

Severus would see the futility of his longing. Dumbledore would make him. No other sacrifice would be good enough.


End file.
